Shanghai A Hospital Outpatient Service One-stop Self-service Effect Assessment

In the twelfth Five-Year Plan and the implementation plan of medical system reform issued by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China in2012, outpatient care is required to be optimized in medical care processes in order to make it more convenient to the patients, to deliver the outpatient care in the form of treatment-firstly-payment-finally, to expend the outpatient appointment, to improve the clinical environment and to shorten patient waiting time for medical care.Outpatient One-Stop-Self-Service system can predigest outpatient care processes, reduce patient waiting time, provide convenient and practical self-service, and distinctly improve medical care efficiency.Background and objective:1. Study BackgroundWith the development of hospital information system, outpatient One-Stop-Self-Service system has made considerable progress recently in both domestic and overseas hospitals and there are many successful cases. Recently, many hospital in shanghai begin to kick off the pilot. Stimulated by the national policies, many cities and regions put out the related local policies to facilitate the development of outpatient One-Stop-Self-Service system. Therefore, this study evaluated the effectiveness of One-Stop-Self-Service system in one hospital of Shanghai.2. Study objectiveThe objective of the study is to analyze the construction of One-Stop-Self-Service system and to evaluate the effectiveness of the system in one hospital of Shanghai, in order to provide a reference for the system promotion in shanghai and the nation.Study contents and methods:1. Study contentsThe study included the analyses of the construction of One-Stop-Self-Service system, the utilization of the system, the impact of the system on patient waiting time, the influence of outpatient appointment on patient flow, the impact of the system on outpatient satisfaction, and hospital staff’s evaluation on the system. 2. Study methodsIn the study, researchers collect data and materials by using literature review, patient questionnaire survey, interviews, observation, and hospital survey. MS SQL SERVER2008、EXCEL、EPIData were used for data process and IBM SPSS19.0was used for data analyses, such as mean, standard deviation, percentage, Chi square test and:multivariate linear regression. Stepwise multivariate linear regression was used to compare the changes of the patient satisfaction associated factors.Study OutcomesThe study showed that:①the traditional outpatient system has many problems such as uneven patient flow, several repeated queuing, many times of back and forth in outpatient care, long waiting time. Three most inconvenient parts were the queing for:registration, the queing for payment, and the queing for getting medicine.②the number of the patients who utilize the One-Stop-Self-Service system accounted for about20%of the total number of the outpatients, and the number of outpatient appointment increased, and the outpatient appointment make the outpatient flow more balanced. In addition, prepaid patients had less queuing times (reduced from8to4), had less waiting time, and were more convenient, because of using numerous self-service machines, especially the machines at different floors.③the overall satisfaction and the satisfaction with convenience in outpatient care were increased in the outpatient surveys. The negative effect of registration and cashier on the patient satisfaction was reduced.Discussion and recommendations①The traditional outpatient system in one hospital of Shanghai had many problems such as uneven patient flow, several repeated queuing, many times of back and forth. Outpatient One-Stop-Self-Service system had a good effect or outcome, shortening patient waiting time significantly, improving hospital outpatient process and increasing outpatient satisfaction. The system is worth of spreading. But, the system needs to be further improved, including that:patient prepayment account should be used in all hospitals in Shanghai and should be linked to all kind of bank cards through China UnionPay system;②the system can be raised utilization ratio through reducing the number of manual registration and billing window;③the system should be more friendly designed in human-computer interaction;④the system should be integrated with the internet and cell phones;⑤the system should enable treatment-firstly-payment-finally pattern to further improve the efficiency.