Factors Influencing Waiting Time in Outpatient Pharmacy of Lagos University Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Time, money and expertise are resources that are indispensable to productivity, performance, efficiency, success and growth of any health institution. This research was aimed at identifying and measuring some of the factors influencing patient waiting time in an outpatient pharmacy. The study employed the use of time monitoring card and time study analysis to volunteered participants. A situation analysis conducted revealed an average of 167 minutes of waiting time. The dispensing time averaged 17.65 minutes, and 67.97% of total waiting time by the patient was due to delay components. The major delay components included patient queues for billing of prescription sheets, payment to the cashier and subsequent time wait before drugs are dispensed. The total waiting time for the dispensing process averaged 55.11 minutes. Generally, there were undue delays caused by the dispensing procedure with a 32.03% lag of processing components and operations in the pharmacy. Factors indentified to influence the outpatient waiting time included, queuing and queuing characteristics-type and integrity of queue, adherence to hospital visits and medication for special disease programs, dispensing time, average waiting time (service time plus queuing time), nature of illness or disease presentation, admission status of patient(s), accrued time from other health services provided to the patient prior to services provided by the pharmacist, incentives for providing efficient services, management structures and operational procedures of outpatient hospital pharmacy, implementation of legal rights on waiting time, inadequate treatment or dispensing facilities, technological innovations of automation and computerization , service efficiency and internal operational factors.