Study on patients’ waiting time at the Ambulatory Care Centre Pharmacy in Hospital Kuala Lumpur and ways to improve the quality of services

Objectives: The project is conducted to study on patients’ waiting time in the Ambulatory Care Centre (ACC) Pharmacy in Hospital Kuala Lumpur, identify the factors that affect patients’ waiting time and find solutions to improve the quality of pharmaceutical services.Methods: A data from Queue Management System (QMS) is observed starting from October 2014 until January 2015. A self-questionnaire is distributed to 30 respondents which were the staff of the ACC pharmacy that include pharmacists, pharmacist assistants, PRPs and students. This survey was carried out to determine the problems faced by the staff during the process of filling prescriptions. Results: Based on the data from QMS, we can conclude that Counter 2 and Counter 3 have the highest average waiting time which is 15.77 and 15.61 minutes respectively. These results are affected by several factors. Mainly, 36.1% of respondents agreed that the major factor that affects patients’ waiting time is the filling of JKUT and DD item, then followed by incomplete prescriptions (27.8%). 25.0% of the respondents stated that the lack of staff also affects the waiting time. About 50.0% of the respondents agree that at least three personnel are needed at a counter in the process of screening, filling and dispensing the medication to the patients. Conclusion: From this result, we can conclude that the main factors that affect patient waiting time are the filling of JKUT and DD items and incomplete prescriptions.