Outpatient Satisfaction at a Health Centre

Abstract

Patient satisfaction is an important indicator and commonly used to measure the
quality of healthcare services. The objective of this study is to assess the patient satisfaction at an
outpatient clinic of a public university health centre. This study was carried out in two stages; face-toface
interviews with the patients regarding satisfaction towards facilities, staff, and waiting line at the
clinic, and observation on the queuing system based on a queuing model. The queuing data were
recorded for four days (Monday to Thursday). A single-line multiple-channel queuing model was
considered. From face-to-face interviews, the majority of patients (70%) were satisfied with the
facilities, staff and waiting time at the clinic; however, 39% claimed that the waiting time was too
long. The results estimated from the queuing data showed otherwise; the maximum number of
patients in queue was 4.36 and the maximum average time in queue was 9.98 minutes. These results
were supported by the theoretical values of the queuing model. Hence, there was no issue regarding
the waiting time. It can be concluded that the outpatient clinic is providing good healthcare services to
university staff and students with a good level of satisfaction.