Abstract
Background: Patient choice is a major theme in current healthcare delivery. Little is known about patients' wishes regarding the timing of medical outpatient clinics.
Methods: A questionnaire survey of 300 sequential patients attending cardiac and respiratory clinics to determine patients preferences for out of hours and weekend outpatient clinics. (Out of hours defined as a clinic after 5 pm on Mon – Fri)
Results: Two hundred and 64 patients completed the survey of which 165 (62.5%) wanted either an out of hours clinics or a weekend clinic. Sixty four (38.8%) specifically stated that this was because of work commitments but for many others, the reasons given were easy to justify.
Conclusion: Current provision for outpatient consultation may not be convenient for many patients with heart and lung disease. A fuller evaluation of the cost and benefits of more flexible clinic hours is now needed.
Methods: A questionnaire survey of 300 sequential patients attending cardiac and respiratory clinics to determine patients preferences for out of hours and weekend outpatient clinics. (Out of hours defined as a clinic after 5 pm on Mon – Fri)
Results: Two hundred and 64 patients completed the survey of which 165 (62.5%) wanted either an out of hours clinics or a weekend clinic. Sixty four (38.8%) specifically stated that this was because of work commitments but for many others, the reasons given were easy to justify.
Conclusion: Current provision for outpatient consultation may not be convenient for many patients with heart and lung disease. A fuller evaluation of the cost and benefits of more flexible clinic hours is now needed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | BMC Health Services Research |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 47 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 24 Jun 2005 |
Keywords
- outpatient service
- medical appointments
- health policy
- patient surveys
Documents and Links
- Feeney, C. L. et al (2005) Do medical outpatients want 'out of hours' clinics
This is the final publisher version of an article published in BMC Health Services Research by BioMed Central. Available at http://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6963-5-47 Copyright: © Feeney et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2005 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.