Authors (including presenting author) :
Yiu CH(1), Ng ML(1), Lam MK(1), Law KY(1), Wong CT(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Out Patient Department, Our Lady of Maryknoll Hospital
Introduction :
According from the statistical report of HK Hospital Authority 2022/23, Hospital Authority deal with 8 millions outpatient attendances and 5 millions of primary care attendances, which is such a huge demand of ambulatory services in daily operation. Patients are always kept to stay in clinic for few hours from registration until collection of medication during FU day. In order to shorten the queuing time of out-patients whom follow up in SOPC or GOPC, Hospital Authority's One-stop App HA GO is implemented with live run from 2020. This HA's One-stop mobile App is targeted to enhance HA patients' healthcare journey experience.
Objectives :
HA GO saved HA resources through this integrated mobile app platform per year by handling of around 1.2 million appointment booking, 220 thousand of payment, 150 thousand of attendances.It only comprises not more than 10% of HA out-patient attendances per year.Actually, still many patients do not know the functions of HA GO and do not use this mobile app for their personalised health management even though they had installed this mobile App. Because many patients do not familiar to use mobile app especially in WTS District. In view to promote and encourage patients to use this app as to enhance their healthcare journey experience, a survey is implemented at OLMH SOPC from 11 Dec 2023 to 29 Dec 2023 as to explore specialist out-patients' understanding towards HA GO and introduce the benefits of using HA GO for better patient self health management.
Methodology :
The survey is designed in a format of face-to-face interview. The questionnaires include pre-education and post-education by HA GO ambassador. The aim is to arouse patients' interest on learning and using HA mobile app-HA GO especially after education by HA GO ambassador. For the pre-education questionnaire, firstly is to explore whether the patient's mobile phone had installed the HA GO or not. Secondly is to identify how depth is the patients' knowledge towards HA GO. The questions include what kind of HA GO function does the patient know, what is their impression on mobile app- HA GO that whether they agree this mobile app can assist them on their health management, etc. For the post-education questionnaire, patients were being asked almost the same questions of pre-education questionnaire. The purpose of the survey is to compare the variations on patients' knowledge and acceptance towards HA GO before and after education. Also, TeleHealth is promoted at the same time as to explore patient's eagerness for receiving TeleHealth.
Result & Outcome :
There are totally 119 patients were interviewed. It includes 46% male and 54% female patients. 53% patients are over 65 years old, 40% is 46-64. From the result of pre & post-education questionnaire, it shows that patients were being known to HA GO via hospital volunteers/staff from 57% to 82% by increasing 25%. For installation of HA GO, those not yet installed HA GO were willing to install HA GO immediately after education. After installation and briefing on using of HA GO, 100% of patients strongly agreed or agreed that this mobile app is easy to operate. There are 51% of patients not agreed for TeleHealth as they preferred face-to-face consultation.After education, it found that all patients were being known to these functions of HA GO and strongly agreed or agreed that this mobile app is beneficial to them. It also found a great improvement on the knowledge of various functions of HA GO. It found that 38% of patients did not know even 1 item before education. After education, it increased from 1 item to 6 items which are known to more than 50% of patients. In conclusion, HA GO is worthwhile and important for patients' self health management as to enhance satisfaction on out-patient journey experience. However, publicity by staff or volunteers is crucial for promoting this mobile app and TeleHealth as it needs time for adjustment of usual practice.
