PATIENTS PERSPECTIVES ON HOSPITAL WAITING TIME. A CASE STUDY IN IRRUA SPECIALIST TEACHING HOSPITAL, EDO STATE

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PATIENTS PERSPECTIVES ON HOSPITAL WAITING TIME. A CASE STUDY IN IRRUA SPECIALIST TEACHING HOSPITAL, EDO STATE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Managing waiting time in healthcare settings is a concept that has been receiving attention among researchers, healthcare practitioners and administrators over the years (Anderson, Camacho and Balkrishnan, 2007; Umar, Oche and Umar,2007; Senti and Lemire, 2011; Gup, Ofoedu, Njoku, Odu, Ifedigbo and Iwuamanam, 2012). Waiting in line has become an integral part of healthcare services and it is considered to be central to assessing patient satisfaction. Yeddula (2012) is of the opinion that as patients experience a greater squeeze on their time,short waits seem longer than even before. This queuing situation is worst in publicly funded or highly busy hospitals and managing it has become a serious challenge.

Waiting lines occur where resources (doctors, nurses, beds, etc.) are limited and demand

for service exceeds supply. Patient waiting time can be described as the amount of time

patient spent before being served. In hospitals, patients can wait for minutes, hours, days or months to receive services. Yeddula (2012) asserts that the amount of time patient wait during clinic visit is a source of dissatisfaction with healthcare. Generally, patients are annoying or been considered an important component in the assessment of health care quality (Harutyunyan, Demirchyan, Thompsonand Petrosyan 2010; Yeddula, 2012). Also, despite describing several methods of evaluating the quality of care (Hermida, Nicholas and Blummenfeld, 1999) and no universal accepted of assessing quality of care (Gup, et al, 2012), there is growing agreement that patient satisfaction survey will be the best to measure quality of care (Press, 2006; Turnbull and Hembree 2006; Merkouris, 2013).

Patients are satisfied when their numerous expectations are met and dissatisfied when they are not met. Bopp (1989) and Matulich and Finn (1989) reveal that patients expected free flow of information from servers. They expected equality in treatment and be treated in a caring, professional, and competent manner. They expected a reasonable and justifiable waiting time. Each factor encounter enhances or detracts from a patient’s appraisal of overall service quality, hence patient satisfaction. In Senti and LeMire’ (2011) opinion, patient satisfaction is a function of the degree of agreement between the patient;s preconceived expectation and perceptions of the actual care. Furthermore, Jenkinson, Coulter, Bruster,

Richards and Chandola (2002) assert that patient satisfaction is an attribute of many factors such as: quality of medical services provided, availability of medicine, behavior of doctors and other health staff, cost of services, hospital infrastructure, physical comfort, emotional support, and respect for patient preferences.

An important factor in assessing patient satisfaction is timely service delivery which can

be achieved with reasonable waiting time. In Mowen, Licata and Mcphail’s (1993) opinion,

there are four key attributes associated with patient satisfaction: trust, adequate

communication flow, behavior of the service providers and waiting time. This study focuses

more on the fourth attribute (waiting time) of Mowen et al’s (1993) study. This implies that in this research, patient satisfaction was defined importantly as satisfaction with waiting room wait time and exam room wait time, and other patient satisfaction indexes. Therefore, this study wants to investigate the relationship between waiting time and patient satisfaction of outpatients focusing on waiting experience and some satisfaction attributes. Although, few researches have been done on relationship between waiting time and patient satisfaction, with longer waiting times being associated with decreased patient satisfaction (Camacho,

Anderson, Safrit, Jones and Hoffmann, 2006), but the degree of the association between

waiting time and patient satisfaction varies across nations, hospitals and departments.

Most of these studies were conducted in developed nations and few that were conducted

in Nigeria focused mostly on Government funded University Teaching Hospitals.

Furthermore, it is evident in Nigeria that patient and society comments negatively about

public hospitals operations ranging from long waiting time, unpleasant behaviours and

negligence of staff, incompetence and discontinuity of care. These negative experiences and comments have resulted to poor public confidence in public hospitals and increased the

patronage of private hospitals. Despite the relevance of these negative comments especially concerning waiting time management to practice outcomes and patient satisfaction, timeliness of care has not been taken serious and among the least studied in Nigeria.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

There is limited publication in the Western Nigerian on the relationship between prompt service delivery and patient satisfaction in both public and private hospitals. It is against this development that this study focuses on how efficient waiting time can improve quality of care and patients satisfaction in the selected hospitals (i.e. both public and private).

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY