Abstract:
Waiting lines are experienced in our daily activities. Waiting in line or queue causes
inconveniences to individuals (patients) and economic costs to firms and organizations.
Patients wait for minutes, hours, days, or months to receive Medical service - waiting
before, during, or after being served. The effect of queuing in relation to the time spent
by outpatients to access clinical services is increasingly becoming a major source of
concern to most public Healthcare providers. This is because keeping outpatients
waiting too long could result in danger to their health as well as waiting costs: Providing
too much service capacity to operate a system involves excessive cost. But not
providing enough service capacity results in excessive waiting time and cost.
The purpose of this research was to assess queue management practices in relation to
patient satisfaction at some selected govemment hospitals in the. Batticaloa district
namely teaching hospital Batticaloa, base hospital Kattankudy, divisional hospital
Santhively, and base hospital Valaichenai. A sample of 384 registered patients in these
hospitals were selected and provided with questionnaires to answer questions. Queue
management was studied using service quality, waiting time for service, the waiting
environment conditions, and queue discipline in relation to patient satisfaction.
The results obtained from questionnaires revealed that patients were generally satisfied
with service quality, the waiting environment in these hospitals, and patient queues
manage properly to guide patients in queues Staff help patients in queues FCFS
discipline follows generally satisfied with how patients are handled. And waiting time
is much longer than service time. While the improvement in the service quality, waiting
environment, and queue discipline increases the patient's level of satisfaction
(positively correlated), an increase in waiting time also decreases the patient's level of
satisfaction (negatively canulated). The regression analysis suggested that all four
components (service quality, waiting time, waiting environment, and queue discipline)
have significant with patient satisfaction.
