Factors Influencing Patient Waiting Time in Public Health Facilities: A case study of Temeke Referral Hospital.

Venance, Sella (2022) Factors Influencing Patient Waiting Time in Public Health Facilities: A case study of Temeke Referral Hospital. Masters thesis, The Open University of Tanzania.

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Abstract

Waiting times for health care services is identified as an important indicator for patient satisfaction. Waitingtime is also associated with quality of health services. There is limited information about what influences long patient waiting in health facilities within Dar es Salaam region. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the factors influencing patient waiting time at Temeke Referral Hospital. The study employed Queueing theory and the Grossman Model for Health.The study employed a case study design. The study enrolled 345 respondents. The study participants were selected by convenience and purposive sampling techniques. Data collection was by wayof questionnaire, interview and documentary review. Quantitative data was analysed by using SPSS and the findings gathered from the field revealed that majority (n=217, 71.2%) respondents were dissatisfied with the overall time that they spent while waiting for health care services which was associated with delays in several service points. These delays resulted from the shortage of health workers, inadequate facilities for service provision and logistics, few medical personnel per shift, lack of effective appointment system, types of services sought by patients and arrival time of patients. Also, results depicted from the study show that respondents were satisfied with the availability and quality of health services delivered at this facility despite waiting for long time. The study concludes that, there is a need to address limitations associated with human resources (availability), infrastructure, and internal hospital procedures. More efforts should be done to improve the capacities of health facilities in order to address the challenges of self-referral from lower-level facilities to the regional referral hospital. Keywords: Customer (patient), queue, Queue discipline, Service mechanism.

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