Can Hospital Waiting Times Be Reduced by Being Published?

Long Waiting Times for Elective Hospital Care – Breaking the Vicious Circle by Abandoning Prioritisation

Background Policies assigning low-priority patients treatment delays for care, in order to make room for patients of higher priority arriving later, are common in secondary healthcare services today. Alternatively, each new patient could be granted the first available appointment. We aimed to investigate whether prioritisation can be part of the reason why waiting times for care are often...

Outpatient waiting times: indicators of hospital performance?

We monitored outpatient waiting times at UK military hospitals over an 18-month period (September 1996-March 1998). The highest mean waiting times for Consultant appointment were in urology (19 weeks) and orthopaedics (18 weeks). The lowest mean waiting times were in psychiatry (3 weeks), ENT surgery (5 weeks) and rheumatology (6 weeks). Waiting times for surgical specialties were around 50% hi...

Preparation of chemotherapy drugs: planning policy for reduced waiting times

This study investigates the impact of pharmacy policies on patient waiting time in the Chemotherapy Day Unit of the Netherland Cancer Institute Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital (NKI-AVL). The project evaluated whether a reduction in waiting time resulting from medication orders being prepared in advance of patient appointments was justified, given that medications prepared in advance risked bein...

Wide variations in hospital waiting times and lists.

Waiting times for hospital admissions: the impact of GP fundholding.

Waiting times for hospital care are a significant issue in the UK National Health Service (NHS). The reforms of the health service in 1990 gave a subset of family doctors (GP fundholders) both the ability to choose the hospital where their patients were treated and the means to pay for some services. One of the key factors influencing family doctors' choice of hospital was patient waiting time....