Reducing Waiting Time in the General Pediatric Clinic at Al Wakra Hospital, Qatar

Background: Waiting times for clinic appointments constitute a key indicator of an outpatient department performance for access to care and patient satisfaction. This is particularly relevant for pediatric population. The Ministry of Public Health in Qatar set a waiting time of 28 days for patients to get new appointment in General Outpatient Department (GOPD). The current average waiting time to get a new appointment in the general pediatric clinic (GPC) at AWH is 57 days. Aim: Decrease the average waiting time to get a new clinic appointment from 57 days to 28 days by the end of December 2018, and to meet the national targets set by the Ministry of Public Health. Methodology: This is a Quality Improvement (QI) project using the Model for Improvement (MFI). The MFI framework is designed to support organizations answering fundamental questions before agreeing on drivers for change. The implementation of change was be facilitated by the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles methodology. The QI project team performed a root cause analysis using the Ishikawa diagram and identified the key contributing factors to the long waiting times to get a new appointment. Twenty-seven PDSA cycle ramps were designed with support of predictive tool to test innovative changes in current operational processes in an attempt to improve waiting time in the general pediatric clinic at Al Wakra Hospital. Results: The monthly average number of referrals for GPC increased by 200% between the pre and post implementation periods. The average triage waiting time improved from 6 to 2.6 days in 2018 and the average become 1 day in 2019. Post-implementation the average waiting time for patients to get new appointment improved from 57 days to 28 days in 2018 and the average waiting time improved to 16 days in 2019. Conclusion: The quality improvement project for the AWH general pediatric clinic demonstrates significant improvement in waiting times for new appointments, the recommendation for the hospital leadership would be to rollout the improvement methodology to other clinics that suffer from similar challenges.