CONTEXT Short patient wait times are critical for patient satisfaction with outpatient phlebotomy services. Although increasing phlebotomy staffing is a direct way to improve wait times, it may not be feasible or appropriate in many settings, particularly in the context of current economic pressures in health care. OBJECTIVE To effect sustainable reductions in patient wait times, we created a...

Background: Evaluating and monitoring the performance of emergency departments (EDs) are steps in one of the most important processes to improving the efficiency of hospitals. Indicators such as patient wait time until being visited by a doctor, patient wait time from the order until admission, percentage of patients with a determined order, time of conversion of a patient’s co...

Introduction: There has been increasing attention on the evaluation of the efficiency and delivery of healthcare while trying to maintain the quality of service patients expect. A variety of studies have looked at various, non-orthopaedic surgical outpatient clinics and the factors involved in patient satisfaction and wait-time. The purpose of this study was to identify if such a relationship e...

BACKGROUND In addition to possibly prolonged suffering and anxiety, extended waits for children's surgery beyond critical developmental periods has potential for lifelong impact. The goal of this study was to determine the duration of waits for surgery for children and youth at Canadian paediatric academic health sciences centres using clinically-derived access targets (i.e., the maximum accept...

BACKGROUND Reducing wait times is a key goal of Canadian health planners and policy makers. Using data from the EMRs of 23 family physicians across southwestern Ontario, we present data on wait times to see a specialist, and evaluate these data for equity. METHODS Cross-sectional analysis of EMR database of 29,303 patients and 544,398 encounters from October 2005 to July 2010. Wait time was c...

As medical costs escalate, health care resources must be prioritized. In this context, there is an increasing need for benchmarks and best practices in wait time management. In December 2005, the Canadian Pain Society struck a Task Force to identify benchmarks for acceptable wait times for treatment of chronic pain. The task force mandate included a systematic review and survey to identify nati...