Patients who have to see a specialist in the public sector currently spend an average of two hours sitting in a queue
ELIZABETH.CHEUNG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Thursday, 05 May, 2016, 12:00am
Esther Wong, ward manager at United Christian Hospital’s orthopaedics outpatient clinic, and analyst programmer Jackel Ma demonstrate how patients register on arrival. Photo: Elizabeth Cheung
An electronic management system could save patients millions of hours wasted in queues at specialist public sector clinics.
The system, developed by United Christian Hospital, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Hong Kong Eye Hospital, tracks the patient from the moment their appointment slip is scanned on arrival. The time they enter the consultation room is also recorded when the doctor scans their medical record.
Queue status is instantly updated on a display screen in the waiting hall, informing patients how much longer they have to wait.
If a patient’s appointment time slot is 11am, but the actual queue has been cleared up to
9.30am only, they could go for a quick coffee
DR BILL CHAN HIN-BIU
“If a patient’s appointment time slot is 11am, but the actual queue has been cleared up to
9.30am only, they could leave for a while and go for a quick coffee,” said Dr Bill Chan hin-biu, service director in information technology and telecommunications at United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong.
If waiting times were particularly long, more medics could be called in or patients redirected instead of sitting idly for hours in the clinic.
“We would have data on which subspecialty in the clinic has a longer waiting time. We could then allocate more staff or ask fewer patients to come back for appointments,” Chan said.
In 2014/2015, each patient at a public specialist clinic had to wait an average of two hours to see a doctor. With around 7.2 million patient attendances, overall waiting time totalled a staggering 14.4 million hours, or 1,644 years.
United Christian’s IT team, which developed a mobile app in 2011 to notify patients when to collect drugs in the pharmacy, aims to run a similar app in the future to tell patients when a doctor is available.
Tsang Kin-ping, vice-chairman of Hong Kong Patients’ Voices, said the introduction of electronic systems in public hospitals should have been done earlier.
“It is a bit disappointing they are doing it just now. It seems they don’t have comprehensive planning to look into what technology could improve services,” said Tsang.
The latest system, which costs around HK$50,000 for extra equipment in each clinic, makes use of Apple’s computer programme Siri for public addresses, such as telling patients which consultation room to go, allowing nurses more time for patient care.
Chan Lai-hung, chairwoman of the Hospital Authority’s working group on specialist outpatient clinic operations, revealed that the system, which was launched in 2013, would be further rolled out to more than 20 clinics in the coming four years, costing around HK$20 million in total for the upgrade.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1941139/electronic-monitoring-promises-slash-waiting-times
