The Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has chalked out a plan to reduce the waiting time as well as the number of visits of patients to hospital.
According to Dr Khalid Mohamed al-Jalham, director of ACC, the hospital has made huge progress in cutting down the waiting time for the patients.
“Before we started the surgeries, we initiated a simulation programme for the patients. We embedded the programme with the patients’ data for every single floor and every clinic in the hospital. We observed the patient’s life at the hospital such as going around the hospital, meeting with doctors and others facilities and attending the services right from the time they entered the hospital until they left. We understood some of the problems and thought of fixing it before starting the surgery,” explained Dr al-Jalham.
“From the observations, one of the things we tried to tackle was to reduce the number of visits of the patients to the hospital. We knew that this can cut down the waiting period for the patients. The patient had to come several times before the surgery for various purposes. We decided to have a programme to solve this problem” he said
“We worked with the anaesthesia department to send the patient to the department immediately after meeting the doctor. This way, the patient will meet the anaesthesia department and give the blood sample and then needs to come back only for the surgery on the given day,” added the official.
The physician also said that the entire hospital was mostly meant for day care surgery and inpatient surgery was currently meant only for ENT and ophthalmology. “We have all the advanced machines in the theatres for all of the most complex and complicated surgeries. All the clinics have the advanced and the most modern equipment and the latest advanced services,” he told.
Dr al-Jalham also noted that the hospital is planning to implement robotic technology navigation system in the orthopaedic department. “We have also enough educational facilities for our staff. There is an audio and video system with which they can take part in any of the conferences in the hospital as well as in other organisations,” added Dr al-Jalham.