Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
Clinical Safety and Quality Service I (Projects aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness of care delivery to meet international standards)
Authors (including presenting author) :
Au TY(1), Ko YT(1), Wong YS(1), Chan R(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Medicine & Rehabilitation, Tung Wah Eastern Hospital
Introduction :
Diabetic patients require numerous pre-consultation workups including registration, vital measurements, and nurse counseling. In TWEH, these workups and consultations take place in two locations requiring multiple queuing and prolonged patient journeys. Besides, patients’ medical records require various processes on consultation day causing delivery delays. This is time-consuming and low efficiency with prolonged overall time from registration to doctor consultation. Therefore, remodeling of the patient journey has to be carried out.
Objectives :
• To reduce the overall time from registration to doctor consultation to within 60 minutes.
• To shorten patient journeys and reduce queuing.
• To improve patient satisfaction.
Methodology :
• Revisit diabetic patient SOPD consultation journey.
• Refine the consultation time slots.
• Evaluate the effectiveness and patients’ satisfaction with the new patient journey.
Result & Outcome :
The diabetic patient journey and consultation time slots were refined in April 2023 and implemented since 1 May 2023. Patients could experience one-stop people-centered out-patient service by receiving the pre-consultation workups and consultations in one location. Patients did not require a 10-minute walk from the DM Centre to SOPD and waiting for the lift. The shortened journey not only reduced the time from registration to doctor consultation from a range of 66.4 – 82.5 minutes (75% tile from CQMS, Jul 2022 to Apr 2023) to 44.5 – 49.6 minutes (May to Oct 2023), but also achieved the KPI (Queuing Time from Registration to Doctor Consultation) from 66 – 74.7% (Jul 2022 to Apr 2023 from CQMS) to 84.8 – 88.6% (May to Oct 2023). Over 90% of patients agreed the new journey was more convenient and showed satisfaction, including the registration service in SOPD. Apart from the patients’ experience, doctors were also satisfied with the timely availability of medical records for consultation. Furthermore, the remodeling eliminated unnecessary duties such as repeated transportation of medical records on consultation day.
Conclusions:
The new journey of diabetic patient SOPD consultation attained higher efficient patient-centered outpatient service. It achieved the KPI with better patient experience. It maintained a high-quality standard using our existing resources.
