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.