Free Reducing Wait Times At Clinics Dissertation Introduction Example

Introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to a dissertation. It shall introduce the scope of the dissertation by discussing the problem, the background of the problem, the purpose of the proposal, the scope of the proposal and the general organization of the proposal. The thesis of the dissertation is wait times at clinics and how that time can be reduced to obtain efficiency at clinics.

Problem Statement

The subject of this paper is waiting times at clinics and how that time can be minimized. What is wait time at clinics? Wait times at clinics can be described as the amount of time a patient takes to be attended to when they visit a hospital. Patient experience is one factor that is rarely put into consideration by health practitioners. Health care givers are more concerned about delivering actual treatment than they are about the overall experience of the patient when receiving that treatment.
Wait times at clinics not only leads to bad patient experience but also inefficiency in service delivery. Many times the waiting area or triage is full of patients who wait for hours on end to receive the next service of their treatment process. Inefficiencies here are the overcrowded clinics, uncoordinated activities, etc.
Wait times at clinics are a problem because they lead to inefficiencies not only for the health care giver but the patient as well. Patients have come to dread visits to the clinic even for routine checkups. Such visits have come to be deemed as a waste of time and patients would rather plan such visits during times when they are sure to get fast services. Public hospitals are notorious for extended wait times at clinics. This has led patients who can afford to prefer private clinics where they are seen on an appointment basis. The wait times at private clinics is considered shorter though not the best at all times, than that in public clinics. Patients who may not afford visiting private clinics are left with no choice but to attend public hospitals.

Background of the Problem

One of the indicators of quality service and efficient service delivery is patient wait times. Patient wait times at clinics are a policy issue that needs to be addressed if hospitals foresee a change in its operations and operational costs. Wait times can be attributed to poor planning and coordination in hospitals. Wait times are experienced before consultation, during consultation and after consultation.
Health care centers typically have different people who provide different services all in the treatment process. For an ordinary routine visit, there are professionals stationed at the reception to receive clients and client information mostly regarding mode of payment. There are the nurses who are stationed at the triage to measure the patients’ vitals. In between that and consultation, there are people who oversee that transition, mostly nurses. The coordination of these activities carried out by different persons is what results in extended patient wait times. This is characterized by poor systems of handover, laxity in the handover process and a general assumption of the patient experience.
Another aspect that has contributed to extended patient wait times is that healthcare centers have assumed the concept of demand and supply during service provision. Healthcare givers typically seek to serve those patients who are sicker or who appear to be in more need of healthcare faster than the ordinary patients. While this strategy may solve only one part of the problem, it does little to eliminate the whole problem. Administering services faster to those who appear to be in more need of it only works to create a backlog and increase waiting time for other patients.
Variations in supply are a major contributor to prolonged patient wait times. Hospitals have for a long time failed to consider, measure and beef up supply. While hospitals may be aware of the demand for healthcare services, matching supply would eliminate wait times. The disequilibrium in demand and supply, uncoordinated service provision, and poor planning are major influencers of the problem of patient wait times in clinics.

Purpose of the Proposal

The purpose of this proposal is to be able to identify the contributing factors of patient wait times in clinics. Further to outlining the factors, this paper would seek to find probable solutions to the problem of patient wait times. This paper also seeks to investigate previous work done on the same and identify the knowledge gaps and try to fill the same. This paper seeks to be a point of reference and provide solutions and alternatives to scholars and stakeholders in the healthcare sector on how to improve service delivery. The proposal will also seek to collect relevant data and analyze it so as to present scientific evidence on the problem at hand.
Patient wait time not only affects service delivery, patient experience but also the economy of a nation, in the long run. In a time when healthcare givers are working with limited resources, reducing patient wait time would go a long way in reducing operational costs. It is the intention of this proposal to identify ways in which healthcare centers can cut on operational costs through reduction of patient wait times.
This proposal also seeks to be a source of knowledge for patients and to sensitize healthcare givers on the important role they play in improving patient experience and healthcare services, in general. The knowledge which this paper seeks to provide is considered essential in a time when other service providers in other sectors of the economy are keener on quality service provision as a means improving operations and reducing costs. Public health centers would be the biggest beneficiaries of such knowledge as they require being the preferred healthcare givers to private clinics so as to be able to meet their cost obligations affectively and continue offering services to the public.

Scope of the Proposal

The objective of the proposed work is to provide a body of knowledge concerning the problem. The objectives are, therefore, to find out the causes of increased patient wait times especially in a technological era such as the one we live in and secondly to propose ways in which such times can be reduced. To do this, the paper shall draw from the following scope. The first stage will be to research secondary data available in the form of book, articles, journals and other scholarly work done. This will provide insight into the background of the problem and any achievements made to date as well as any knowledge gap that requires to be filled.
The second phase shall be the collection of the primary date. Primary data is essential in collecting current data which will provide a clear picture of the state of affairs. The proposal will collect and investigate data from healthcare centers, both public and private. The healthcare centers that will be used will be picked from different states and will act as sample data representative of the whole country. The sample data will be from at least thirty healthcare centers.
The proposal will also use data collected from patients through questionnaires, interviews, and telephone interviews. Secondary data will also be considered, in this case. Also as a source of data, an experiment will be carried out using a few candidates who will pose as patients and record their experience and give feedback on the same. The second group of people who data shall be collected from is the healthcare givers themselves; again sampling shall be used here so as to get a well-represented feedback.
This work is anticipated to be done within the scope of three months. This should provide ample time for data collection, recording, and analysis as well as reporting. Two months will be assigned for the data collection process and the remaining month for analysis and reporting. Should further time be required, the same shall be reported.

Organization of the Proposal

The proposal is organized into distinct parts. The first part is the title page that will contain the title of the dissertation, the name, and date. The next part will be the abstract which is a summary of the introduction, statement, and background of the problem. The research questions, procedures and methods of carrying out the study are also summarized in the abstract. The abstract serves to give the reader a sneak preview of what the dissertation is about.
After the abstract is an introduction to the work, this will provide information on the circumstances that have led to the need to carry out the study. The next part is the problem statement which encompasses information regarding available knowledge in the intended area of study and how the study seeks to increase knowledge in that particular area.
A background of the problem is the next part of the proposal where information regarding how the problem came into being and any achievements that have been made in trying to eliminate the problem. Both empirical and theoretical works are included here. The purpose of a dissertation is a form of inquiry within a broader scope of knowledge. It is in this section where the relationship between the available knowledge and the intended study is discussed. The next section is the research hypotheses or study or questions that the study aims to address. The research questions should be consistent with the problem statement and background of the problem.
The procedures and methods for carrying out the study are also essential and will be mentioned in the proposal. Information included here includes the type of study intended to be undertaken, the data intended to be collected and ways in which the data will be collected, the control measures to be applied to ascertain integrity of data collected, and the instruments of data collection etc. The proposal will also mention the limitations expected to be encountered when carrying out the study, such limitations may include: budgetary constraints, data availability, etc. the last section in a dissertation proposal is the body of references used in obtaining secondary data.

Conclusion

The above paper serves as an introduction to the dissertation on reducing wait time in clinics. From the information provided above, it is clear that such a study is justified and will be a much-needed source of information.