Patient Perception on Reducing Prolonged Waiting Time in Outpatient Department in Indian Population

Abstract

Outpatient department (OPD) is the first point of contact with the patient and serves as a window to any healthcare service provided to the community. The care in OPD indicates the quality of services of a hospital and is reflected by the patient’s satisfaction and their perception about the time spent. Reducing waiting time and making sure that patients receive the right care at the right time, which will have a significant beneficial effect on the quality of care patients receive. In turn, this will improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care. The study underlines the need of the hour, viz a viz, the need for identifying and rectifying the ‘barriers’ which the patients perceive and experience whilst seeking medical care. In this study, only 52% of the patients did not mind the waiting period at the OPD. About 58% of the patients had no difficulty finding the OPD in the hospital. A total of 60% of the patients were not troubled with the registration process while only 40% of them found the number of registration staff to be adequate and 52% of them were satisfied with the cooperation of the registration staff. About 62% of the patients were happy with the number of doctors available to them at the OPD, 60% of them were satisfied with the time spent with the doctor at the OPD and only 56% of them were satisfied with the discussion with the doctor that followed. Thus, we can conclude that there is still a large population visiting the OPD who are not completely satisfied with the whole OPD experience and reducing the waiting time, increasing the ease for registration and giving more time per patient with the doctor would help make it a whole lot better.

Keywords: outpatient department (OPD), waiting time, patient

Cite this Article

Joshi CJ, Gaonkar KJ, Murulya KS. Patient Perception on Reducing Prolonged Waiting Time in Outpatient Department in Indian Population. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Health Professions. 2018; 8(3): 43–50p.