DOHA: The latest ‘customer feedback report’ released by Primary Healthcare Corporation (PHCC) indicates a steady improvement in performance of health centres, resulting in a higher patient satisfaction.
Overall, the majority of patients providing feedback were very satisfied with the services they received at health centres. Only 15 per cent of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the services, says last month’s report.
Ninety three percent of patients expressed satisfaction with nursing services while 88 percent of patients were satisfied with physician services. The satisfaction level with reception was 75 percent, dental services 80 percent, pharmacy services 84 percent, appointments 73 percent, waiting time 57 per cent.
The major areas that need further improvement have been identified as patient access, procedures, parking, staff competence and waiting time.
Health centres started distributing new “feedback cards” to the patients since November last year through its redesigned customer service called “Hayyak”. Seventy-one filled feedback cards were received across all health centres last month. The majority of feedback has been from patients visiting general clinics.
Overall the majority of patients waited less than 30 minutes at the reception, shows the report. However, there were few patients who said they waited over two hours.
“The length of time patients waited to be seen by a Physician increases significantly from the wait at reception. The nursing project proposes the introduction of triage, which is aimed at filtering patients appropriately to ensure the patient is seen by the right person at the right time, which it is anticipated will reduce the time taken to be seen by the physician,” said the report.
There is a “physician project” that aims at introducing the average 12 minute consultation, that would help standardize consultations and keep the consistent flow of patients, reducing backlog and waiting times. The areas where improvements have already been made at some health centres were front office and customer service, about which the patients have particularly noted their satisfaction. Top dislikes were about long delays, appointments, overcrowding, attitude and behaviour of the staff and quality of work, in the descending order.
“Earlier in 2013 the top dislike was: attitude and behaviour of staff. It is really positive to see such a substantial decrease in the level of dissatisfaction related to this now,” said the report.
Delays are being addressed as part of the Health Centre Improvement and patient flow programmes. Accessibility to appointment booking, rescheduling and cancelling is improving, with the introduction of a centralised call centre, the report said.
Majority of the respondents wanted improvement in patient access. Other areas identified by patients were improvement in processes, more parking, more spacious facilities, more qualified staff and reduce waiting time.
“The suggestions for improvement have been shared with the Change Agent Team and Project Managers to ensure these are considered when planning and implementing projects across all areas of PHCC healthcare provision,” concluded the report.
The Peninsula
