Efficiency Improvement of Patients’ Transportation at the Super Tertiary Hospital in Southern Thailand

Abstract

         The objectives of this research and development study were to develop an online data recording system for patient transportation and to examine the efficiency of a system performance in regards to time usage, labor and materials. The sample consisted of a head officer of the patient transportation unit, 40 head officers of the customer service units and 64 patient transportation workers. The research instruments consisted of 3 parts, 1) The development of an online recording system which included previous data from patient delivery, manual records, and the opinion from the head officers of the patient transportation, as well as 40 office heads from the customer service units; 2) The instrument for designing the work system was the System Development Cycle using the server with a middleware server. MySQL was used for the database, whilst the Microsoft Visual Basic 6 was used as its software; and 3) the efficiency study section used the patient transportation data recorded by the hospital information system database developed in the year 2016, which was obtained 199,030 records. The data were processed, grouped, and sorted by Fox Base. Data were compared and displayed using Microsoft Excel. The statistics used in the analysis were frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.

         The results showed that the patient transportation data record has been developed from a paper record to a computer online system. The online system could help tracking all real-time services, covering the steps of service request, response, assignment, and individual performance reporting. This information can be used to improve work efficacy. As a result, the overall service achievement in time rate increased from 56.72 percent to 66.35 percent. The on-time service was the lowest at the time periods of 08.00, 12.00, 13.00 and 16.00 hours. The 31-40 year old staff could provide a maximum on-time service at a percentage of 41.07. However, stretchers, that had been used the most, had a percentage of on-time service of 45.01 percent. The lowest on-time service was the zone that receives patients from the wards to the blood screening, physical therapy and rehabilitation units, which is on the ground floor of the building. The results of this research can be used by executives to monitor work performance, manpower management, supply allocation, and work system design leading to service improvement as the researcher has developed an online system to display in real time.