Health panel wants patients to make reservations for hospitals

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April 21, 2015

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Health panel wants patients to make reservations for hospitals

By Cai Wenjun | April 21, 2015, Tuesday |

Print Edition

SHANGHAI Health and Family Planning Commission has chalked up a plan to push patients to make appointments for out-patient services at city-level hospitals and expects to achieve 30 percent target it has set for this year and 50 percent by 2017.

The commission found the reservation numbers were higher for dental and prenatal service.

District and city-level hospitals are required to give priority to patients with reservations and those transferred from community hospitals as the commission wants more people to visit the community hospitals for the first checkup.

Hospitals said reservations can be done on telephone, website and apps.

Dental, prenatal service and expert clinics have high reservation rates, but in sections, especially in hospitals where large number of patients are either senior citizens or from other provinces, the reservation rates are low with most of them preferring to queue up, register and wait in the hospital itself.

Hospitals say reservations can save time for patients while ensuring better hospital management.

Officials from Zhongshan Hospital, one of the leading city-level hospitals in Shanghai, said many patients don’t know the procedure for making reservations.

The hospital also has limited man power and out-patient resources in dealing with the huge demand. It said it will step up reservations for patients who make the trip to the hospital for the first time. For elderly people, they would request them to go to the community hospitals first.

“I waited for over two hours to see a doctor to treat hypertension in Zhongshan last week,” said a 65-year-old patient surnamed Zhang. “Even though there are dozens of rooms receiving patients, it took a long time for doctors to see such a large number of patients. It will be better if patients can reserve in advance and visit hospitals like in Western countries. Staff on the site can teach us how to make reservations.”

Officials from maternity hospitals said prenatal service was already done through reservation.

“Our hospital’s reserved out-patient service is almost 35 percent and over 70 percent for prenatal service,” said Wang Jue, an official from the Gynecology and Obstetrics Hospital of Fudan University. “Reservation is mainly done through on-site, telephone and website. We will promote smartphone application reservation in the near future to meet the government requirement as well as for the convenience of patients.”

Xia Lin from Shanghai Children’s Medical Center said the hospital has a high reservation rate as parents always call or check the internet to book appointments in the experts’ clinics.

Metro Health and Science

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Health panel wants patients to make reservations for hospitals

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