The main concern of Health care providers is to provide quality care to consumers. One of the factors which influence this is patient waiting time.
To study the waiting time for patients attending the outpatient departments right from their entry into the hospital premises till their departure and also to study the possible operational factors that lead to excessive waiting time.
200 outpatients were selected at random and the waiting time was studied by manually tracking them.
The patient waiting time in our study was found to be favorable to the patient at all levels except for the time spent with the doctor.
Such studies should be carried out periodically as a monitoring procedure to improve hospital service quality.
Waiting Time, Outpatient Department, Quality Patient Care
