A Recommendation on Reducing Waiting Time in The Out - Patient Department at Accord Hospital Mosh

Background: This article addresses the issue of longer patient waiting time in the outpatient department (OPD) of a super specialty hospital. Due to longer waiting times at OPD, patients had to suffer and their treatment was getting delayed. This problem was solved with the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) method. The entire process, from patient registration todrug delivery, is included in the project. In the process, steps that do not create added value are determined and implemented. This process improvement study looked at shortening the patient waiting time between registration and outpatient department at Accord hospital Moshi. The mean waiting time was calculated in OPD for various departments from the survey collected. The patients were dissatisfied with only one bus provided which can be improved by increasing the number of vans. The registration department has the mentioned giving priority to the Appointment patients and hence the Walk -in patients have to wait case registration hence online appointments can be implemented and the number of staffs can be increased by providing proper training about the administration. The patients were satisfied in diagnosis and pharmacy departments with the services provided to them. The delay in billing department is because time taken to get the lab reports which can be reduced by increasing the number of staffs in the laboratory and radiology department. Overall, 62% of the patients were satisfied with the services provided by the hospital. Patients attending each hospital are responsible for spreading the good image of the hospital and therefore satisfaction of patients attending the hospital is equally important for hospital management. Various studies about outpatient service have elicited problems like overcrowding, delay in consultation, proper behavior of the staff etc. The study reveals the average spend by the patients and also expresses their view towards the hospital and hospital's services provided by the hospital and the total consumed on each activity. In this study, it was found patients constitute of all age groups and genders among which most of them were females. Study depicts that average no. of patients coming to OPD each day as walk -in is more in comparison to the appointment patients. Administrative staffs are quite concerned towards the patient's expectation. They serve the suggestion box for patients and make sure to respond to the suggestion satisfactorily. Queuing method is followed for reducing waiting time in OPD. Study depicts that OPD always starts on time and the doctors mostly comes on time. Patients also come on scheduled appointment time sometimes getting delayed. Since Reception center being the primary bottleneck of the system, by increasing another server here, the system may be made to work in steady state. The possibility of clubbing function of Reception center with the registration may also be explored since this could cut down one additional node and a total process time of 10 minutes approximately for each patient. However, it was evidently proved through the simulations that having a single refraction chamber with 8 or even 6 technicians, the hospital could reduce waiting time up to 25 percent, as well as better utilization of resources. Advanced simulations using simulators would help the administrators to visually see what happens when we change the resources in the system. In healthcare Queue modeling can be applied in the areas wherever queue is involved such as rationing, scheduling, Bed allocation, laboratory design, and so on. Aim: Patient waiting time for healthcare services is identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the key measurements of a responsive health system. Patient waiting time is the amount of time for patients seeking care at healthcare units before being attended for consultation and treatment. It is globally agreed that a well -designed healthcare service management system should not have patients to wait long time for appointment and consultation. Lengthy waiting time has long been considered frustrating to patients and thus appears to be a consistent and significant potential cause of patient dissatisfaction. A strong inverse relationship between patient satisfaction and waiting time has been demonstrated by many studies 5-10. As healthcare solutions become more personalized and consumer driven, the need to provide overall patient satisfaction is becoming more important. The project is to quantify the waiting time and identify the factors associated with waiting time for services offered at the general outpatient department in order to find with evidenced based solutions of solving the problem of long waiting time. Subjects and methods: Data Collection Methods:The data will be collected using both by primary data collection methods as well as secondary sources.Primary Data: Most of the information will be gathered through primary sources.The methods that will be used to collect primary data are: Questionnaire, Interview.