Walk-in clinic
1. Problem/ Symptoms
The initial problem that company faced was a long waiting time of the patients.
It was due to the fact that all the nurses were involved in seeing all the patients and after that 60% of all patients were anyway redirected to the physician. This created a bottleneck. At the physician, the same evaluation of decease was made and the patient was asked the same questions – duplication occurred. So, the patient had to wait twice – before being seen by a nurse and then by physician. Sometimes it took till 55 minutes to get to a doctor.
2. Recommendations
Long waiting time is a typical problem for walk-in clinics and the waiting time can be hardly decreased significantly in this case. Students prefer not to go to a doctor at all instead of sitting in the long lines. That is why the clinic has not so good reputation.
The research tells us that a lot of patients would like to have personal doctor and to visit the same doctor every time. So, actually, the clinic should be better refocused on appointed visits, instead of walk-in clinic. But if we still consider leaving the walk-in system, its work may be improved by creating groups, consisting of several physician and nurses.
3. Tools and Techniques
To begin with, it would be good to eliminate the number of visits to a physicians appointed beforehand for the time period from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. and to increase the number of open slots for the same-day appointments. In this case, patients will have a chance to get to doctors. In this case the physicians and nurses will be able to take patients that need a help today and can’t wait for two or three days for a visit.
Patients should be also asked to call prior to coming into the clinic to be able to get a same day appointment.
By creating working groups, patients will no longer be able to make the appointment to a particular physician, but to a chosen group. For example, one group may consist of two physicians and one...