Authors (including presenting author) :
Keung WH(1), Ip CY(1), Lee PL(1), Lai SL(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Department of clinical Oncology, Queen Mary Hospital
Introduction :
In view of increasing service demand in clinical oncology department (COD) of Queen Mary Hospital. The needs to control a better queuing time and enhance patients’ experience are required, since long queuing time can have a negative impact on both patients’ satisfaction and staff’s morale. Currently, patients need to queue up for booking the subsequent follow up in the booking center after consultation. Then, patients need to wait for the documents checking including blood taking appointment booking and prescription checking in the nursing station. To complete the whole process, it normally takes around 45 minutes or more. Hence, it is important to streamline the post-consultation workflow to shorten the waiting time of the oncology patients.
Objectives :
(1) to streamline and redesign the post-consultation workflow (2) to enhance patients’ satisfaction after consultation by improving communication with patients and information transparency. (3) to promote staff morale by streamlining clinic workflow and reducing unnecessary workload
Methodology :
Redesigned clinic workflow after the consultation. Patients will be given a queuing ticket after leaving the consultation room. Patients can check the queuing status for documents checking. The information transparency can be enhanced. Moreover, in the redesigned clinic workflow, patients no longer need to queue up for booking the subsequent follow up. All the documents will be prepared and given by either nurses or clerks. The unnecessary travelling of the patients or relatives was reduced. Besides, the blood taking appointment can be booked by both clerks and nurses. Education was given to the clerks for arranging blood taking appointments for patients. The workload can be shared, and the time consumed to complete the follow up process was shortened. A questionnaire was designed for patients to evaluate their satisfaction and another questionnaire for staff to evaluate their experience after the changing in the clinic workflow.
Result & Outcome :
A total of 60 patients participated the survey with response rate 88 ％. Over 85 % of the respondents were satisfied with the redesigned clinic workflow, and agreed that it enhanced the overall experience. Moreover, evaluation results showed 90% of staff in the COD outpatient clinic were satisfied with the new post-consultation clinic workflow and promoted a positive morale. The success of the program was attributed to patients’ and staff’s positive attitude, and it helps to reduce waiting time after consultation, unnecessary workload and complaints in COD outpatient clinic.
