Objectives
The management believed that having absolute clarity in its consumption patterns for delivering its clinical services would serve as the foundation for consistency in clinical care, high efficiency in delivering its services and uniformity in pricing. Outcomes
Our solution – The solution considered business perspective in terms of efficiency and the clinical perspective in terms of effectiveness of a treatment plan in developing a comprehensive solution. With a well-structured representation of appropriately designed metrics the solution could instantly help the stakeholders deduce potential areas of improvement.
One of the largest healthcare providers in the country was able to significantly increase patient satisfaction while at the same time enhancing revenues by transforming the Outpatient department to cut out wait times and delays through clear visibility of their processes. Customer Experience is key to the growth of any business and a hospital is no exception to this. Within a Hospital, Outpatient Services is one of the most complex and challenging areas for the Operations team as they not only cater to a large volume of patients but also offer a wide range of services amidst highly fluctuating demand. The experience at the Outpatient consultation is critical in influencing the patient's decision to engage with the hospital further. Our analysis further suggested that patient satisfaction had a strong correlation to the waiting time experienced during the Outpatient Journey.
Limitations of the Traditional Wait Time Management Process
For a leading hospital chain, there were two primary channels through which patients visited for a consultation, namely, pre-booked appointment and a direct walk-in with a 50% split for each channel. A pre-booked appointment is expected to begin on time and walk-in patients expect their wait time to be minimal. While the doctor's time is the critical and limiting resource in the OP Consultation process, there are other factors that influence delays, namely administrative processes creating a bottleneck due to poor visibility on the patient flow patterns and cascading effects of the first delay in the day. Hence, in the traditional system, the patient wait times and delays were largely dependent on the experience levels, efficiency, and staffing ratios of the admin desk which often played a reactive role to the demand at hand. Further, there were no objective ways to monitor and assess the Delays and Wait Times. Without this visibility, the management couldn’t devise strategies for improving the patient experience.
A data-driven approach to solving the Wait Time problem
With our Data Intelligence solution, we were able to empower both the administrative person on the ground and the management to take key decisions both in real-time and strategically. With insights into patient arrival patterns, slot creations, slot utilization, cascading delays, and wait times, the team was able to proactively structure the activities of the admin process in coordination with the clinicians. By benchmarking the Wait Times and Delays across hospitals, the management was able to adopt the best practices of their best-performing units across their hospital chain. In cases where wait times or delays started to show a rising trend, the Operations team could immediately do a root cause analysis and intervene promptly.
Effective planning helps better patient care and improves throughput
Through our solution, the management could also ascertain the right time required for the consultation with each doctor and were able to take strategic decisions around outpatient consultation slotting and scheduling.
Eventually, the hospital chain was able to improve the percentage of outpatient consultations done within 30 minutes by almost 20% within a short span of 6 months.
The overall Wait Time came down from 60 mins average to 35 mins average during the same period. Further, the conformance to scheduled consultation start time improved by ~15%.
These changes improved the throughput allowing the hospital to free up capacity to handle higher loads. The hospital was also able to observe a marked increase in patient satisfaction which showed up as a significant increase in the Net Promoter Score within 6 months of implementation.
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