Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2008 Category 2: Botswana
Africa
Botswana
2008 Category 2 Finalist
Princess Marina Referral Hospital, Botswana
Description
Reducing “patient waiting time” by providing integrated medical services through
a one-stop shop in the Princess Marina Referral Hospital in Botswana.
Summary
Through the Project entitled “Long patient waiting time” at Princess Marina Referral
Hospital Outpatient Dispensary, the dispensary managed to integrate all medical services
while reducing the long patient waiting time for health examinations and drugs.
The Problem
One of the biggest problems at the Princess Marina Hospital Outpatient Dispensary
was that patients waited for too long before getting their medications. Data collected
during the month of October 2006 before the initiative was implemented showed
that 95% of sampled patients waited for an average of two hours and 21 minutes
instead of the expected one hour (a target the team decided on) due to the flow of
work such as frequency of meetings and rotational schedules; inadequate allocation
of Pharmacy staff within departments, and the high volume of patients. The above
resulted in some patients going away without their medication, staff fatigue and
strain due to over-time.
The Solution
A team within the Hospital made up of doctors, pharmacists and other relevant
stakeholders was formed in order to tackle the above problems. The Pharmacy
Total Quality Management team took various steps in trying to redress the problem,
i.e., brainstorming; clarification of objectives; multivoting; theme selection
matrix, Fishbone diagram, Pareto Chart, Countermeasure Matrix and Standardization.
The brainstorming aimed at highlighting all the problems the department
encountered. The Theme Matrix Selection was undertaken to select the process to
be adopted based on the impact on the external customers (patients) and the need
to improve.
The Fishbone Diagram was used to analyze and identify the root causes of the problem.
This was followed by a Pareto Chart to prioritize the actions to be taken in relation
to the root causes. The Countermeasure matrix was developed in order to help
the team compare the different countermeasures for each objective and decide which
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