Friday, August 12, 2016

Thought I could reduce my waiting time at the general hospital...

but it backfired!

From past experience at the Ipoh GH, the waiting times average at 10 minutes to get a number at SOPD (Sugery Out Patient Department) and 2-3 hours to see the doctor; 2-3 hours at the UPD (Unit Pengambilan Darah) if given the normal queue number beginning with 1, or 20-30 minutes if given the fast track number beginning with 2 (patient needs to take the sample to the lab himself); half an hour to get the medicine from SOPD pharmacy; 10 minutes to get medicine from pharmacy at Kompleks Rawatan Harian (Day Care Complex).

There are different queues at different departments like Xray to get an appointment for CT Scan, Endoscopy for endoscope, and so on.

So for any patient who needs to go to different departments, he or she has to know where to go in the right order. Knowing the locations helps and to get from one place to another, if at different floors, even walking on upper floor instead of the ground floor enables one to walk faster because of the lesser human traffic.

Thursday before last, I was pleasantly surprised at the UPD when given the usual queue number, and it took only 1 hour to have my blood sample taken. It normally takes at least 2 hours of waiting. The reason was simply because of an additional person to help out: 6 instead of the usual 5. This cut waiting time by more than half!

Last Thursday, I tried to be clever in trying to save time. I had to have my blood sample taken as well as see the doctor. Previously, after getting the fast track number and taken the sample to the lab, then only I would place my appointment card at SOPD. I lost out on the queue number, for eg. my previous number was 4015. Last Thursday, I went to SOPD first to get my number, 4005, before going to have my blood sample taken. Alas, this time, I noticed the number 1 desk at UPD, which normally takes only from fast track patients, also takes from the usual patients. This effectively slows down the fast track queue. It took me one hour to have my sample taken before I could make it to SOPD to wait for my turn to see the doctor. Because it takes an hour to have the blood sample analysed, I actually hoped it will take longer to see the doctor! But because my number was 5, and by the time I went there, it was at 4002, it took only 45 minutes before my number was up on the queue system. I had to apologise to the surgeon that I was late in providing my blood sample and she said I should wait outside for the result before she could decide on the next cycle of treatment.
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