Patient Waiting Time: Gaps And Determinants Of Patients Waiting Time In Hospitals In Our Communities To Receive Quality Services

Abstract

Background: Patient waiting time has been recognized as an important indicator for determining the quality of healthcare services offered by health facilities. Waiting time is strongly related to patients’ satisfaction with the care received at the hospital in general.
 Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in February 2018 among new patients attending general out-patient department (GOPD) of randomly selected hospitals in South-Western Nigeria. A structured pre-tested questionnaire was used to elicit information from 223 patients who were recruited into the study using a convenience sampling method.
 Results: The average total clinic waiting time (TCWT) from entry to seeing a medical doctor was 137.02 ± 53.64 minutes. Only 6 (2.7%) met the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation of having at least 90% of patients seen within 30 minutes of their scheduled appointment in contrast to 193 (86.5%) of respondents desiring to wait not more than 30 minutes for whatever reason before been attended to by the doctor. Although, the level of satisfaction was high (81.2%) in this study, patients who waited longer (>180 min) are more likely to be dissatisfied with services rendered in the OPDs (χ² = 20.104, df = 1, P = 0.001). Factors such as few health personnel (81/120) and having an insurance cover contributed significantly to the waiting time (χ² = 19.54, df = 1, P = 0.001).
 Conclusion: In a competitively managed health care environment, patient waiting time play an increasingly important role in a clinic’s ability to attract new business. Efforts therefore, should be made not only to reduce the patient waiting time, but health managers should invest in resources and activities that ensure a productive use of the time patients spend in the process of seeking healthcare services.

An Assessment of Door to Consultation Time in Outpatient Department (OPD) of a Tertiary Care Cardiac Hospital: A Clinical Quality Improvement Project (QIP)

“…[17][18] This could be as a result of shortage of manpower evidenced by two record clerks attending to an average of 100 new patients daily in addition to a far greater number of follow up attendants. 19 This QIP helped to establish evidence regarding the patients' waiting time in our society where most of the patients prefer to go to the tertiary care setups than primary care due to the limited primary care services and lack of awareness.…”

Development of an app to monitor queues at an ophthalmological institute

“…A funcionalidade "esperômetro" é uma das principais funcionalidades do app, pois atua diretamente na experiência do usuário com a consulta, fornecendo informação acerca do quanto tempo o paciente está esperando, evitando o desencadeamento de sentimentos negativos (Usman et al, 2020). O "esperômetro" deve atuar como um medidor, ou "termômetro", do tempo de espera na fila.…”

“…Com os conceitos de gerenciamento de filas é possível desenvolver sistemas que monitoram o fluxo de entrada e saídas de pacientes, em busca da otimização da prestação de serviço (Souza et al, 2019). Devido às longas esperas, a busca das instituições pela diminuição do tempo aguardando em filas por atendimento, favorece o surgimento de aplicativos como ferramentas para melhorar a satisfação de seus clientes (Usman et al 2020).…”

“…Além disso, a busca das instituições pela diminuição do tempo de espera de pacientes em filas por atendimento, favorece o surgimento de aplicativos como ferramentas para melhorar a satisfação de seus clientes. Segundo o estudo realizado por Usman et al (2020) em hospitais no sul da Nigéria com 221 pacientes, 40% alegaram o longo tempo de espera como causa da insatisfação, seguido da má atitude dos funcionários (33,3%) e falta de profissionais (26,7%). Mesmo com a existência de aplicativos que podem ser utilizados no gerenciamento dos tempos de espera em filas de atendimento, ainda é necessário a investigação de modelos que se adequem às diferentes características de cada hospital (Souza, 2016;Gomes, 2019).…”

Validation of the Sleep Quality Questionnaire among senior students in Benin City, Nigeria

“… 6 , 7 Other available tools can accurately serve the same purpose and at the same time be administered within a shorter time. In a setting such as Nigeria, where time is a constraint, 8 such a scale becomes invaluable. Two tools, the Sleep Quality Questionnaire (SQQ) and Sleep Condition Indicator (SCI), are therefore of interest in being very short and understandable for use in detecting poor sleep quality among Nigerian adolescents.…”