• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.337-346
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• 2008

A questionaire survey was conducted for patients who had been examined at the Department of Radiology to investigate the items that need to be improved. Brainstorming was also conducted by team members to suggest the tactics that can efficiently perform the QI activity by selecting the most frequently answered topics for the reduction of waiting time of x-ray examination. From September 2006 to November 2007, number of patients before and after conducting QI was compared for 3 months by each category differentiated by types of detailed causes. A patient case was set as one shooting for one patient. After conducting QI, the waiting cases before conducting QI were evaluated for the method of improvement for 3 month through the QI team discussion and conducted by following the improvement method for the next 1 month and the waiting cases were measured and the difference before and after the QI activity was compared in percentage. 1. When patient waiting cases were compared before and after conducting QI activity against the causes of repetition, it resulted in 3.9% of reduction effect. 2. When patient waiting cases were compared before and after conducting QI activity against the causes for the lack of guiding, it resulted in 1.1% of reduction effect. 3. When patient waiting cases were compared before and after conducting QI activity against the causes of miss-inputting prescription, it resulted in 1.1% of reduction effect. 4. When patient waiting cases were compared before and after conducting QI activity against the causes for emergency patients, patients with acute pain and discomfort patients, it resulted in 12.0% of reduction effect. 5. When patient waiting cases were compared before and after conducting QI activity against the causes for shooting overlapping of outpatients and hospitalized patients, it resulted in 4.7% of reduction effect. There are many factors to reduce the patient waiting cases in radiography. The first step is for radiology department to find these factors through QI, to improve them, which is the reason why the QI team is organized to perform the QI activities.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2010

Customers often experience waiting for buying service. Managing customers' waiting time is important for service providers since customers who are dissatisfied with waiting, secede from a service place at last. Not a few studies have been done to solve waiting time problem and improve customers' waiting experience. Hui & Tse(1996) identify evaluation factors in customers' behavioral mechanism as customers wait. That is, customers experience perceived waiting time, waiting acceptability and emotional response to the wait when they wait. Since customers evaluate the wait using these factors, service provider should manage these factors in order to minimize customers' dissatisfaction. Therefore, this study explores that evaluation factors of waiting are influenced by customers' situational and experiential characteristics, which include customer loyalty, transaction importance for customer and waiting expectation level. Those situational and experiential characteristics are usually given to service providers so they can't control these at waiting point. The major findings derived from two exploratory studies can be summarized as follows. First, according to the result from the study 1 (restaurant setting), customers' transaction importance has the greatest positive influence on waiting experience. The results show restaurant service provider could prevent customers' separation effectively through strategies which raise customers' transaction importance, like giving special coupons for important events. Second, in study 2 (amusement part setting) customer loyalty has large positive impact on waiting experience as well as transaction importance. This results show that service provider could minimize customers' dissatisfaction using strategies which raise customer loyalty continuously. This results show customer perceives waiting experience differently according to characteristics of service place and service itself. Therefore, service provider should grasp the unique customers' situational and experiential characters for each service and service place. It could provide an effective strategy for waiting time management. Third, the study finds transaction importance and waiting expectation level have direct influence customers' waiting experience as independent variables, while existing studies treated them as moderators. Customer loyalty which has not been incorporated in previous waiting time research is known to affect waiting experience. It suggests that marketing strategy which builds up customer loyalty for long period of time is also quite effective, compared to short term tactics to help customers endure waiting time. Fourth, this study reveals the importance of actual waiting time along with perceived waiting time. So far most studies only focus on customers' perceived waiting time. Especially, this study incorporates the concept of patient limit on waiting time to investigate effect of actual waiting time. The results show that there were various responses to the wait depending on how actual waiting time exceeds individual's patent limit on waiting time or not, even though customers wait about the same period of time. Finally, using structural equation model, conceptual path between behavioral responses is verified. As customer perceives waiting time, then she decides whether she can endure it or not, and then her emotional response occurs. This result are somewhat different from Hui & Tse(1996)'s study. The study also includes theoretical contributions as well as practical implications.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.62-84
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• 2001

The purpose of the study was to compare patient's satisfaction on the pharmacy services after introducing the new system of separation of dispensing from prescribing medicines, between those filling their prescriptions from the pharmacy nearby hospitals and those from the pharmacy in their resident areas. To measure patient's satisfaction, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 354 outpatients who received prescriptions from any of the three university hospitals located in In-Cheon city. Study results showed that geographic accessibility to pharmacy was a main attribute to select pharmacy. Size of the pharmacy and availability of prescription drugs are the second major reasons for pharmacy selection for the patients from the pharmacy nearby hospital, whereas patronage is the second major reason for those from the pharmacy in resident areas. Overall satisfaction was higher among the patients from the pharmacy in resident areas than those from the pharmacy nearby hospitals, mainly due to better facilities(waiting area, public telephone, etc), kindness, cleanliness, shorter waiting time, and pharmacist's concern about patient's health. On the other hand, the patients of the pharmacy nearby hospitals showed low satisfaction because of long waiting time and the lack of pharmacist's knowledge and information about patients' health status and medication history. Patients visiting the hospital that has pharmacy-hospital cooperation system showed higher satisfaction as compared to those visiting the hospital without such system. This study provided an empirical evidence that it would be more advantageous for patients to receive pharmacy services from pharmacies located in their living areas than from pharmacies nearby hospitals. This implies that there is a strong need for adequate strategies to enhance the role of pharmacies in resident areas under the new system of separation of dispensing from prescribing medications.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.63-72
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• 2002

Patient satisfaction is an important factor in evaluating the quality of care. Patient satisfaction may be used to evaluate provider services and facilities, and used to predict the patient returns to a facility. The patients d whether the patient returns to a facility or whether the patient recommends the facility to other people may be affected by a variety of factors of patient satisfaction. Low satisfaction may result in poor compliance with the potential of waste of resources and suboptimal clinical outcome. This study is to identify factors of patient satisfaction that will affect patients decision whether the patient returns or not. A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted in Seoul, Chung-Joo and Bu-Cheon cities, Survey data was obtained from 743 patients who visited the physical therapy practice at university hospitals, general hospitals and clinics. Response rate was 94.4%. The instrument developed by Goldstein et al. (2000) was used and translated into Korean. Several items were added to the instrument. Patient's opinions of service in each domain measured using 5-point Likert-type scales that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree. A multiple-regression analytic approach was used to predict overall satisfaction of physical therapy. Age, kindness, scheduling, convenience of parking, privacy, and waiting time predicted the overall satisfaction of physical therapy. The older patients had higher level of satisfaction with physical therapy compared with the younger patients. Patient satisfaction were more affected by access (scheduling and waiting time), administrative technical management (convenience of parking), and interpersonal management (kindness of physical therapists and other staffs) than clinical technical management (physical therapists' skills).

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 1987

This Study was an attempt to estimate the optimum numbers of Operating Room Nursing Manpower by measuring the amount of service hours required by the patients in Operating Room in relation to the service amount actually provided by the nurses. The major concern of this study was placed on the measurement of Nursing Service Requirements by using the Operating Room (O. R) Patient Acuity System recently developed by M. M. Hart to classify the O. R. patients into four groups according to the degree of the complexity of operative procedure and some other elements which increase nursing activities in respect of patient care; Acuity IV group is the one requires nursing services most, on the other hand Acuity I requires least. nu sing The objectives of this study were as follows; 1. To analyze functions of the nursing personnel in O. R. by time unit and to estimate the average time a nurse can activate for productive functions. 2. To measure the actual amount of nursing times provided by nurses to the surgical patients. 3. To develop a patient classification system in order to measure the amount of Nursing services required by the patients. 4. To calculate an appropriate number of nursing manpower to meet the needs of the patients. In order to conduct the research both selected nurses and patients in 'S' University Hospital were Studied by utilizing the O. R. Patient Acuity System as well as the Classification Chart developed by Association of Operating Room Nurses (A. O. R. N) as a means of classifying functions of O. R. nurses. That is; Functions of the 10 selected O. R. nurses observed during the period of June 30 to July 4, 1986, whereas the amount of nursing services required by or provided to the 974 patients who had received surgeries during the period of June 9 to July 4, 1986. The results of this study were as follows; 1) The actual working hours per a nurse averaged 6.7 hours a day. 2) Each nurse's daily routine schedule consists of $71.4\%$ for Technical Functions, $16.1\%$ for Nonprodective Functions, $6.6\%$ for Assessment and Evaluation, $3.9\%$ for Overseeing and Supervision and the rest $2.0\%$ for Patient Preparation respectively. 3) Preoperative waiting time per a patient was 24.1 minutes on the average; for the first case was 10.7 minutes, whereas for the following cases was 32.0 minutes. 4) Total Operation time for the 974 patients during the period of observation for this study amounted to 2759.6 hours, weekly hour was equivalent to 689.9 hours, Whereas daily operation time averaged 130 hours. Meanwhile the average operation time per patient was 2.8 hours ; for the case of Acuity IV was 5.6 hours, 5. 1 hours for the case of Acuity III, 2.3 hours for Acuity II and 1.1 hours for Acuity I. 5) According to the O. R. Patient Acuity System, $64.5\%$ of the whole patients belonged to Acuity II, $23.7\%$ to Acuity III, 11. $3\%$ to Acuity IV and $0.7\%$ to Acuity I respectively. 6) Required amount of nursing times based on the preoperative waiting time and operation time was 7167.8 person hours, which showed that $5.5\%$ of them needed for preoperative nursing care, whereas the rest $94.5\%$ for intraoperative nursing care. In terms of the O. R. Patient Acuity System, $49.7\%$ of total nursing service requirements was needed for Acuity II patients, $27.4\%$ for Acuity III patients, $17.2\%$ for Acuity IV patients and $0.2\%$ for Acuity I patients. 7) The rate of the nursing services provided against the required nursing times was about $81.4\%$ on the average; some departments, like those of Plastic Surgery, Otolaryngology and Ophthalmology whose patients mostly belonged to Acuity II recorded hegher provision rate than average, whereas other departments of Thoracic Surgery. Neurosurgery and Orthopedic Surgery whose patients belonged to Acuity III and Acuity IV as well as Acuity II recorded lower provision rate than average. 8) Subsequently, required numbers of nursing manpower was 10.7 nurses additionally. Based on the above findings the following recommendations will be made; 1) this study recommends, develops. and adopts an accurate and realistic O. R. Patient Acuity System which can help measure the nursing service requirements objectively to elicit the rationales of allocation of nursing personnels. 2) this study proposes storongly place nurses who take the role of preoperative nursing care exclusively for the waiting patients in O. R. and shortening their waiting time by close communication between the designated O. R. and the ward.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.2829-2834
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• 2013

The objective was to analyze the radiotherapy (RT) practice at the cancer centre of a tertiary academic medical institution in Delhi. This audit from an Indian public institution covered patient care processes related to cancer diagnosis, integration of RT with other anti-cancer modalities, waiting time, overall treatment time, and compliance with RT. Over a period of one year, all consecutively registered patients in radiotherapy were analyzed for the audit cycle. Analysis of 1,030 patients showed median age of 49.6 years, with presentation as stage I and II in 14.2%, stage III and IV in 71.2% and unknown stage in 14.6%. A total of 974 (95%) were advised for RT appointment; 669 (68.6%) for curative intent and 31.4% for palliation. Mean times for diagnostic workup and from registration at cancer centre to radiotherapy referral were 33 and 31 days respectively. Median waiting time to start of RT course was 41 days. Overall RT compliance was 75% and overall duration for a curative RT course ranged from 50 days to 61 days. Non-completion and interruption of RT course were observed in 12% and 13% respectively. Radiotherapy machine burden in a public cancer hospital in India increases the waiting time and 25% of advised patients do not comply with the prescribed treatment. Infrastructure, machine and manpower constraints lead to more patients being treated on cobalt (74%) and by two-dimensional (78%) techniques.

• Korean Journal of Digital Imaging in Medicine
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.171-175
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• 2011

Server and Pi view management, external image and internal image Copy Import business in PACS room is through the medical assistance. Import and Copy, and in particular the number of cases is increasing the number of import is a fast growing trend. Although the increase in workload With limited human resources to increase business efficiency so Remote system is using PACS room. This remote system will want to evaluate the effectiveness of using the service. Amount of data each 437.5 MB, Copy and Import time is to compare and evaluate sees by use 1 PC. 4 PC, 4 PC+ remote system. The use of the remote system before the January 2010 to June daily average waiting time and the use of the remote system after the January 2011 to June compared to a daily average patient waiting time, evaluate. Using the remote system in January 2011 to June Find out the average remote utilization. The biggest difference on the four copy and eight continued, Were performed two times faster by use 4 PC+ remote system than use 4 PC and four times faster than use 1 PC. Before using the remote system, the daily average wait time is 14.5 minutes after using the daily average 10.2 minutes, waiting time 30% of the existing waiting time was 4.3 minutes, to reduce. Using the remote system in January 2011 to June the average daily number of cases is 107 number and The number of remote and on average 35 cases with 32% in a day remote usage. The use of the remote system to Import, CD Copy and greatly increase the efficiency of their time could be. Hours due to efficiency could also reduce customer waiting time. As a result, the manpower and the use of a remote system over time to maximize efficiency in business hours, work was evaluated by.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.74-83
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• 2001

Background : Since a Gamma Knife had been installed on December 1997, 405 patients have been treated until December 1999 at department of neurosurgery of Seoul National University hospital. The authors analyzed results of a work to improve satisfaction of Gamma Knife surgery patients and to reduce hospital length of stay. Methods : To understand main discontent of patients, a pre-survey was performed from October 1998 to December 1999 using a questionnaire. By Analyzing 93 questionnaire received from 234 patients, pain on frame application, explanation before surgery, waiting time before surgery, waiting time before medical procedure were main discontent factor and overall satisfaction ratio was 71.0%. To improve satisfaction ratio, several quality improvement activity works were designed and applied to 123 patients during the period between January 2000 and September 2000. The same questionnaire were analyzed. Works to reduce the patient hospital LOS were devised and applied during the same period. Results : The overall satisfaction ratio of Gamma Knife radiosurgery patients was increased to 83.7%(P=0.10). The main factor to improve satisfaction ratio was to reduce waiting time(P=0.05) and improvement of discomfort during the surgery(P=0.06). The average LOS was reduced from 3.1 to 2.7 days(P=0.003). Conclusion : As a result of quality assurance activities, the overall satisfaction ratio of patients was improved and LOS was reduced. The pain during frame application was remained as a main discontent factor and a further study is required to reduce this pain.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.522-531
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• 1999

This research identifies the ingress to egress primary factors that causes a patient to receive delayed emergency medical care. This material was collected between February 1st to 28th, 1998. Research envolved 4,118 people who visited the college emergency medical center in Kyeongido Province, South Korea. Medical records were examined, using the retrospective method. to determine the length of stay and the main cause for waiting. Results are as follows : 1. The age group with the highest admission rate was 10 and under, approximately 1,394 (33.9%). Followed by an even distribution for ages between 11-50 at 10-15% for their respective ranges. The lowest admission rate was 50 years and above. 2. From the 4,118 records examined, 3,489 received outpatient treatment (84.7%); 601 were admitted for inpatient care (14.6%); 25 arrived dead on arrival (0.6%); and 4 people died at the hospital. 3. Between 7PM to 12AM, 42.9% were admitted to the EMC. The hours from 9PM to 11PM recorded the highest admission rate and 5AM to 8AM was the lowest From 8PM to 12AM, the most beds were occupied. 4. For most patients. the average length of stay was approximately 2.2 hours. By medical department, external medicine was the longest for 2.8 hours. Pediatrics was the shortest for 1.6 hours. The average waiting period for inpatient admission was 2.6 hours. Inpatient admission for pediatrics and external medicine was 3.4 hours and 2.2 hours respectively. 5. Theses are primary factors for delay at EMC: 1) pronged medical consultations to decide between inpatient versus outpatient treatment, and delaying to be inpatient, 2) when you call physicians they are delayed to come 3) Understaffing during peak or critical hours, 4) Excessive consulting with different medical departments, 5) some patients require longer monitoring periods, 6) medical records are delayed in transit between departments, 7) repeated laboratory tests make delay the result, 8) overcrowded emergency x-ray place causes delay taking x-ray and portable x-ray, 9) the distance between EMC and registration and cashier offices is too far. 10) hard to control patient's family members. The best way to reduce EMC waiting and staying time is by cooperation between departments, both medical and administrative. Each department must work beyond their job description or duty and help each other to provide the best medical service and satisfy the patient needs. The most important answer to shortened the EMC point from ingress to egress is to see things from a patient point of view and begin from there to find the solution.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.449-458
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• 2005

There have been rapid changes in the pharmaceutical environment after the separation of Dispensing and Prescribing practice. In the early stage of this system, outpatients had few options to choose their pharmacies due to various obstacles. Under these circumstances, this study on the defection tendency of long-term care patients was performed through the analysis of outpatients who quit visiting a pharmacy nearby general hospital. PowerBuilder ver 9.0 program was used to extract significant data, and SPSS package was employed for statistic analysis. 3,308 outpatients who visited a pharmacy nearby hospital for a month (in January, 2004) were studied. Patients' sex, age and location of residence, the class of medical insurance, the characteristic type of medication (powder, split form, medication for external use/injection), waiting time, disease (department) were considered as variable factors. It turned out that the patient revisit ratio was 80.8$\%$ and the patient defection ratio was 32.4$\%$. As was expected, those factors mentioned above influenced on the revisit and defection ratio considerably. In terms of patient factors, it proved that there was no relationship among sex, location of residence, the class of medical insurance and revisit (defection) ratio. Only age factor influenced the ratio; the older, the higher revisit ratio and the less defection ratio. In respect of dispensing factors, there were obvious relationships among the factors and the ratio: bill (money they had to pay individually), waiting time, number of medications, splitting of tablets, unit price of drug and revisit (defection) ratio showed significant relationship. The result of this study revealed an aspect of outpatients' behavior and it could be used as a reference for better patient service and customer relationship management.