Abstract
Although awareness exists that over-crowding in the Outpatient Department has
been a similar to that in government hospitals, previous studies of the problem had been
carried out on the situation in provincial and university hospitals. The present researcher
conducted this study to determine the factors relating to the problem of overcrowded
outpatient services in a community hospital where he works; he used the experience thus
obtained for developing the service quality of the hospital. A survey was taken by questionnaires on stakeholders (June 2007), regarding service
quality; the study was carried out in the period July-October 2007. The survey resulted
in most staff agreeing with the need to refer chronic cases to the primary care unit,
but disagreeing with the posting of a doctor service in the primary care unit on weekends;
the patients were not happy with the self-care functions if there was health worker
visit. After the service has been initiated, it could be expected that patient waiting time
would decrease from 192 minutes to 110 minutes.
The researcher made suggestions for reducing the overcrowding problem by integrating
health taskforce distribution by equity versus efficiency and incentive policy for
community hospitals and primary care units in order to improve the service quality and
the referral system.
