Investigation and Assessment on Improvement of Waiting Time of Outpatients at Hospital Pharmacy

One of the serious problems for hospital pharmacy is a long waiting time of outpatients and it is a very uncomfortable time for them.In 1989, we brought a new system into our pharmacy for shortening the waiting time of them.Next year we interviewed a total of 300 outpatients at dispensing counter and asked about their desirable waiting time to verify the new system.Outpatients were classified as three groups consisting of each hundred of them, women (group I), men (group II), and the mothers who took their babies to the pediatric department (group III) The ratios of the desirable waiting time within twenty minutes in each group were 44% in group I, 46% in group II, and 65% in goup M.Then we conducted another investigation on the waiting time that outpatients experienced it at the pharmacy lobby. We selected a total of 800 outpatients at random and asked about it.It was found that 72.5% of them got their medicines within five minutes, and 91.6% of them got within 10 minutes. We can conclude from our investigations that group III wants shorter time to get their medicines than other two groups and the adopted new system have been bringing about good results.