Authors (including presenting author) :
Yeung LM, Lau SM
Affiliation :
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Queen Mary Hospital
Introduction :
Long waiting time for pregnant women in antenatal midwife clinic that could take 60 to 70 minutes to complete relevant assessment, education, and investigation
Objectives :
- To use lean management strategy to identify bottleneck of long waiting time
- To better slot planning for out-patients
- To reduce queuing time for patient attending nurse clinic
- Enhance client experience in clinic attendance
- To explore other additional service for time spared
Methodology :
To look at the whole client journey in out-patient appointment from registration to leaving clinic. After identify bottleneck, devise plan to rearrange appointment timeslot to match demand to clinic capacity along the process. Earlier timeslot would be arrange for shorter length of stay in the clinic; client with multiple or longer procedure/ investigation would be arranged to later timeslot
Result & Outcome :
- Mean queuing time reduced from 46 (Range 18 to 65 minutes) to 27 minutes (Range 3 to 51 minutes)
- Client satisfaction survey (4-point Likert scale) increased from 3.6 to 4 minutes
- 20 additional high risk (social adversity) cases could be seen and shorten their waiting time 4 weeks
