BOOKS OF RtfiDIfGS - PAHO/WHO

- 149 -
ihe future. It was discovered that in some departments certain
appointment times, e.g., reports, were unfilled while at the same
tii... the demands for new, newlold and consult times exceeded
their availability.
Figures V and VI identify the problems:
1. The number of ways that a patient can be tr:..sferred before
making an appointment or cancellation.
2. Patients wishii.; to make cancellations may not reach the
correct locations. Consequently, if a patient has multiplc
appointments, some appointment times will remain reserved,
even though the patient has contacted the clinic to
cancel them. 4
Both problems resulted because the various types of appointments
are made in many different locations and, iri general, the
persons making appointments (and cancellations) do not know
exactly who make 'ihe various types of appointments for other
departments.
Especially for the out-of-town patients, the time span of routing
should be kept as short as possible. s The major obstacles to a
short time spa.. are the difficulty in obtaining consults, time
availability constraints (i.e., certain tests are only available at
certain tines of the day), and procedural constraints (i.e., some
tests which require special preparation may not be followcd by
certain other tests.)
It was found that missing or incomplete charts were a major
problem for many people in the clinic. A missing or incomplete
chart may cause delay in the patient examination, a deay ;in the
report, and often results in a great loss of tC ie i-i locating the
missing material.
When an appointment is made, the person who makes it
should generate an appointment slip and send a copy to the chart
processing area. This is called preregistration. If a patient is not
preregistered, the paper work is started when the patient arrives
'A patient with multiple appointments may assume that if he cancels one of the appointments,
the remaining ones are also cancelled. Usually this is not true.
sit was the clinic's policy to try to schedule out-of-town patients for the shortest possible
routing time span.
HOSPITAL & HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 1 WINTER 1978