Waiting Time to Receive Healthcare Services and Factors Affecting It: Case Study in a University Hospita

Background: The clinic in a hospital is usually the first place to which patients arereferred. A long queue, which results in dissatisfaction among patients, iseconomically costly for managers; medical institutions can, therefore, determinethe level of required resources for optimum investment through management toolslike queue theory and waiting time caused by it. The current study was conductedto evaluate waiting time at various clinics of Amir Alam Hospital in Tehran.Methods: The analytical study was conducted in the period from April to Augustin 2015 on 150 patients who were referred to five clinics of Amir Alam Hospital.The samples were selected through stratified random proportion to sample size anddata was collected in a designed frame through SPSS21 and descriptive tests ofmean, standard deviation and regression analysis.Results: The longest waiting time for patients was related to the surgery clinic at61.05 minutes. Also, the longest time to provide service was related to the surgeryunit at 26.84 minutes. Results obtained from univariate logistic regression testindicated that all evaluated variables—including time to receive service, capacityof providing service, order of queues and number of doctors—exert a significanteffect on waiting time of patients in the hospital (P-value < 0.05).Conclusion: Increasing capacities, keeping adequate number of doctors, reforms,removal of unnecessary works and using scientific tools to manage queues can beeffective in reducing waiting time for patients. Owing to its importance for patientsatisfaction, it is necessary for managers to think of ways to shorten queues inhospitals.