The Qatar Ambulatory Pulmonary sleep disorder Clinic is implementing a new approach to managing patient flow by integrating telemedicine follow-up and overbooking strategies to optimise technology and operational efficiency, ensure timely consultations and improve patient experience.
The strategy outlined in the Qatar Medical Journal ‘Telemedicine: Potential impact of the future improved accessibility and waiting list to HGH Sleep Clinics through overbooking strategy, Hamad Medical Corporation ( HMC), Qatar’ and published on QScience.com highlights that the overbooking strategy, combined with telemedicine, can help streamline virtual appointments and ensure efficient use of healthcare professionals' time. It further points out that this can ultimately reduce waiting times and improve accessibility for patients seeking sleep-related healthcare services.
According to the article by a group researchers from HMC, telemedicine usage is predicted to enhance care quality and reduce healthcare spending by 32%, boosting patient satisfaction, community trust, and teamwork, thereby reducing hospital resource burden and costs.
The article points out that that with the wider use of telemedicine, the hotline service can also be established to optimise clinic efficiency, improve resource utilisation, and minimise waiting time for suboptimal diagnostic and therapeutic sleep tests. Thus, telemedicine has become a transformative force in healthcare.
The telemedicine strategy can be used for virtual consultations and follow-up appointments reducing in-person visits. In addition, remote monitoring devices are another method to control the waiting time of the consultations. Home sleep apnea testing devices can be used for remote monitoring allowing electronic sharing with healthcare providers.
This can also optimise scheduling with overbooking of appointments. It offers flexible appointment times for wider patient schedules. It also helps to strategically overbook slots to maximise utilisation of available time slots. It also leads to online appointment system user friendly platform and utilise automated reminders via email or SMS.
With the implementation of the strategy at the Qatar Ambulatory Pulmonary sleep disorder Clinic, a multidisciplinary team was formed to review the clinic's current practices and identify barriers to patient flow. A strategy was chosen to integrate overbooking and telemedicine follow-up.
Staff education and training were also provided. The team collaborated with HMC Nasmak to evaluate patient feedback and improve the patient experience. They also communicated with clinical informatics team to create encounters, improve electronic communications, and manage appointment systems. Monthly data collection was conducted to evaluate clinical performance and update practice.
