Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
Research and Innovations (new projects / technology / innovations / service models)
Proposed Topic (Second preferred): :
Clinical Safety and Quality Service III (Projects aiming at quality service to patients and their carers)
Authors (including presenting author) :
Chan S(1), Lee MP(1), Wong WS(1), Yeung KY(1), Chan SN(1), Chan KL(1)
Affiliation :
(1) HIV Clinical Service, Department of Medicine, Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Introduction :
The Hospital Authority (HA) has been implementing advanced technologies since 2017 to create smart hospitals. One of the initiatives is HA GO, a one-stop mobile platform designed to improve patient experience in the healthcare journey. In August 2023, remote ticketing via HA GO was introduced in KCC/QEH SOPCs, which was extended to Shroff and Payment Kiosk in November 2023. This feature allows patients to submit prescriptions to the pharmacy without physically visiting the pharmacy. Since a majority HIV clinic patients are ambulatory and independent, HIV clinic aims to promote ambulatory care in QEH HIV clinic by using HA GO and remote ticketing so as to improve their experience as well as to facilitate traditional and new nurse clinic services.
Objectives :
- Improve patients’ journey and enhance their experience
- Reserve more contact time in HIV clinic to facilitate intervention and services
- Early initiation of dispensing process and shorten waiting time in pharmacy
- Enable medication delivery services for patients with special need (PSN)
Methodology :
HIV nurse clinic has reviewed the utilization of HA GO and remote ticketing in HIV clinic since Dec 2023. We randomly recruited 111 patients and asked whether they are HA GO full members. HIV clinic also designed “HA GO” label for clinic OPD file in order to distinguish HA GO membership. If they are not HA GO members, our clinic staff will promote HA GO mobile app by providing pamphlet to state a summary of the service and explain instructions on how to use the service. In addition, clinic staff would assist to install HA GO and guide to use e-payment.
Result & Outcome :
Before the promotion of HA GO and remote ticketing, 48 (43%) are already HA GO full members while 63 (57%) are non-members. Among those HA GO full members, 10 out of 48 patients (21%) were not familiar with HA GO function and required assistance from clinic staff when using e-payment. After promotion by HIV clinic, 22 out of 63 (35%) has installed HA GO by themselves right after the promulgation. Regarding new and existing HA GO members’ about their types of payment and ticketing, 44% used e-payment via HA GO, 52% used Kiosk payment and only 2 patients chose in-person payment due to personal reason. Regardless of HA GO membership, we analyzed 111 clinic patients’ option for payment and ticketing, showing that the majority (66%) of patients used Kiosk, around one third (31%) of them used HA GO and only 6% approached pharmacy and shroff in person. During the promotion period, only 3% of clinic patients opted for drug delivery service. Among 43 non-HA GO members, 38 patients (88%) used Kisok payment and remote ticketing.
In a patient satisfaction survey, 71% rated 4-5 (strongly agree) that remote ticketing was helpful, while 29% had no comment (all are non-HA GO members), and no patients disagreed with the new service.
Despite the positive feedback for the new service, we collected other comments from ethnic minority group. Since they don’t know neither Chinese nor English, they were not beneficial from the new service of HA GO due to language barrier. Other comments also revealed concerns for confidentiality after installation of HA GO while some found mobile payment non-trustable. For those elderly patients, they declined using HA GO because they are not familiar with smart phone function.
To conclude, this exercise has demonstrated that HA GO and remote ticketing improve patients’ journey and increase patient contact time at HIV clinic. Besides, this exercise also highlighted the importance of adding more common languages in HA GO app in order to benefit a wider group of patients.
