An innovative approach to reduce clinic waiting time at the District General Hospital, Matale

Introduction: District General Hospital (DGH) Matale is the only tertiary care hospital in the Matale district. Those who need specialized care are being treated at the specialized clinic conducted by the Hospital. Normally, one consultant consults around 15 to 25 patients per clinic. Therefore, the clinic waiting time was more than 8 months for some specialties. During this period patient will not receive proper treatment and will default.
Justification: This project was implemented to reduce clinic waiting time to offer high-quality and efficient service to patients.
Objective: To reduce clinic waiting time at DGH- Matale in order to improve the quality of health care service.
Methodology: Quality-improving tools such as fishbone analysis, SWOT analysis, and nominal group technique were used to identify the main reasons for long waiting times at the clinics. Strategies were implemented after conducting several stakeholder meetings with the responsible members of the hospital, including consultants. Performance was reviewed monthly to assess the progress.
Result: Clinic waiting time of the almost all the clinics were reduced drastically with new strategies by April 2025. As example surgical clinic reduced from ¹0 months to one week, Neurology ¹³ weeks to 4-week, Medical clinic 1 week to 3 days.
Conclusion and recommendation: High waiting time for a clinic is a big issue to patients and they are suffering from the illness for long time. It directly affects the morbidity and the outcome of the patient. It reduces the quality of health care service of the hospital. By implementing simple quality improvement activities with good inter-sectorial coordination can reduced unnecessary waiting time at clinics.