AN ASSESSMENT OF QUEUE MAI{AGEMENT AND PATIENT b SATISFACTION OF SOME SELECTED GOVERNMENT HOSPITALS TN BATTICALOA DISTRICT

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.