Improving Waiting Times in Hand Surgery Clinic at Rumailah Hospital, Qatar
Abstract
Background: The quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery are key drivers that
influence hospital quality as well as patient satisfaction. The patient waiting time is the
period of time that passes between patients first seeking medical treatment from the
healthcare system and their admittance for consultation and diagnosis. The hand surgery
clinic at Rumailah Hospital (RH) in Qatar has seen that only 12% of new patients who had
been referred for urgent treatment from the accident and emergency department had
received an appointment within 14 days.
Aim: To increase the percentage of patients with new, urgent referrals to the hand
surgery clinic at Rumailah Hospital from the accident and emergency department to be
seen within 14 days from the current 12% to 20% by the end of October 2019 and from
20% to 60% by the end of April 2020.
Methodology: This is a Quality improvement Project used the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement model for improvement, the team used the root cause analysis to
identify the bottleneck in the process, the Plan- Do - Study - Act (PDSA) cycles facilitates testing the selected changes: increase capacity, triage acciedent and emergency referrals,
and clear the back log.
Results: After implementing the changes, we observed increase in the proportion
of patients who received appointments within 14 days of the referral, from 22% in July to
26% in August and 40% in September and October, 2019.
Conclusion: The project team did extensive research in understanding the complex
process of OPD appointment and clinic consultation. The project team tested three change
ideas that yielded to manage the percentage of patients who received appointments within
14 days. The team is planning to test the next change idea to improve the triaging process
by implementing electronic triaging, which is expected to reduce the waiting time for an
appointment in the clinic.
DOI/handle
http://hdl.handle.net/10576/12625Collections
- Public Health [38 items ]