Authors (including presenting author) :
LAM KKA, WAN YT, CHAN N, LEUNG WM, HUNG SY, Cheung PH, CHEUNG YHK, WONG MSM,
WONG MYM
Affiliation :
Department of Family Medicine and Primary Healthcare, Hong Kong East Cluster
Introduction :
Diabetes mellitus and hypertension are major chronic diseases managed in General Outpatient Clinics (GOPC). The increasing prevalence increases the demand on laboratory investigations to assess disease control and comorbidities. There was a 17.2% rise in blood taking attendances in 2020 compared with 2019 (45386 attendances in 2020 vs 38552 in 2019). Blood test service (BTS) operates from Monday to Friday morning. There was no quota setting. The number of scheduled cases was not recorded. This could bring about an uneven distribution of workload across working days. Due to the first-come-first-served basis and herd behavior, patients tend to come early in the morning to get the queue number. Some patients expressed long waiting time up to 2-3 hours. Some raised concerns about prolonged fasting causing hypoglycaemia, especially diabetic patients. Therefore, conflicts between patients and health care workers arose and created tension and stress in health care workers. Limited space and difficult crowd control were observed in GOPC and was made worse under the COVID-19 pandemic. The clinic saw a need to revise the booking system to cater for the increasing demand and the infection control requirements.
Objectives :
To facilitated crowd management to achieve social distancing under COVID-19 and minimize conflict in clinic.
Methodology :
A new BTS scheduling system was piloted in Violet Peel GOPC in 2019. This was rolled out to other clinics in phases. By mid-2021, it was in place in all GOPCs in HKEC.
Individual clinic divided the blood taking period into 2-3 slots. The former part of the session was reserved for fasting blood tests, and the latter part for non-fasting blood tests. Patient attended according to the arranged time slot. A queue number was distributed upon arrival. Corporate Queue Management System and Kiosks smoothened patient’s journey.
Result & Outcome :
Since the implementation, patient’s waiting time for blood taking had markedly shortened from 2-3 hours to less than 1 hour. The segregation between fasting and non-fasting blood taking minimized the risk of hypoglycaemia related to prolonged fasting. Last but not least, BTS facilitated manpower arrangement under its constraint.
