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IMPLEMENTATION OF AN APPOINTMENT MANAGEMENT MODULE APPLIED TO THE OUTSIDE PATIENT AREA
European Statement
Patient Safety and Quality Assurance
Author(s)
JUDIT PERALES PASCUAL, ANA PÉREZ LÓPEZ, HERMINIA NAVARRO AZNAREZ, ELENA HERRANZ BAYO, MARIA PEREZ MORENO, CARLOS-IGNACIO DIAZ CALDERON HORCADA, Mª REYES ABAD SAZATORNIL
Why was it done?
In 2019 the UPEX attended a large volume of patients without a scheduled appointment, long waits were generated and the pharmacotherapeutic follow-up was complicated. The purpose was to implement an appointment management module to avoid crowds, excessive waiting times, allowing better organizational management of care and knowledge of patients in each type of consultation.
What was done?
An outpatient is a patient who goes to the outpatient unit of their Hospital Pharmacy Service to collect a drug for hospital use/diagnosis or foreign drug (it will be administered without health personnel intervention).
An appointment management system was implemented in accordance with the objectives of the SAMPA project (Service for Registration and Promotion of Adherence to Medicines for Elderly Patients), included in the European STOPandGo project.
How was it done?
Creating a cross-cutting system for the entire clinical circuit from prescription to dispensing involved a great deal computer involvement. Although it began to be used in November 2018, it was not used by the mostly part of prescribing doctors until the end of 2020.
Now, when the patient leaves medical consultation, he/she will go to the pharmacy and will be seen by a pharmacist. Besides, the program will propose a return appointment when it calculates that the patient has a week’s worth of medication, thus preventing the patient from running out of medication. The pharmacist will decide if the patient needs pharmacotherapeutic follow-up.
What has been achieved?
In 2019, 5 services cited patients while in 2020 it was 14; the percentage of patients attending pharmacy cited increased from 73.2%(2019) to 79.4%(2020).
Currently, the pharmacist knows in advance which scheduled patients he has and can establish a better organizational care management and determine in advance if the patient needs a close pharmacotherapeutic follow-up. Additionally, with this system an average waiting time of 03:55min was achieved (in 2019 appointments with waits >30min were recorded).
What next?
The implementation of the appointment management system has made possible to achieve better organizational management of care,avoid crowds,excessive waiting times, and provide better patient care and pharmacotherapeutic follow-up. The proposed solution can be extended to other hospitals.