The Reality of Scheduling Specialized Medical Appointments in Public Hospitals in Manabí, Ecuador

Abstract

Objective: to establish a relationship between the form of access and the waiting time for care of users who needed specialized medical consultation in areas that required a referral from a general practitioner in the public hospitals of the cities of Manta and Portoviejo during the period. from January to March 2023. Methodology: Cross-sectional study, where users of public hospitals were asked about how they obtained their medical appointment and how long they waited to be seen from the scheduling of their medical appointment to the moment they were seen. A structured questionnaire with social, demographic and economic questions was used to determine the factors that influenced waiting time. The t test and ANOVA with Welch correction with a significance level of 0.05 were used to establish relationships between the average waiting time and the social and demographic variables. Results and discussion: On average, patients wait 49 days for their specialized medical consultation, and in some cases, the wait extended up to 180 days. Those who accessed through the formal process had to wait up to 19 days longer compared to those who accessed with the help of a family member or friend who worked at the hospital. Originality/value: The results suggest the existence of informal access to obtain specialized medical appointments in the three public hospitals of Manabí, which could be one of the causes of the delay in appointments scheduled through the referral and counter-referral system.