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SINGAPORE: Seventy per cent of patients with non-life threatening conditions seen at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital's (KTPH) Accident & Emergency Department leave the hospital within an hour.
The quick turnaround time is made possible because a one-stop pharmacy has been set up within the hospital's Day Surgery Centre and the Acute Care and Emergency (A&E) Centre.
This removes the need for patients to queue separately for their prescriptions at the main pharmacy, says Alexandra Health, which operates the hospital.
The hospital operator says the pharmacy is just one example of how it has adapted principles like Lean Quality Management and "kaizen" - normally linked to the manufacturing process - to the hospital setting.
The overall aim is to improve productivity and enhance customer service.
The hospital's Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) also take on some of the functions performed by doctors including attending to patients requiring continuing care and prescribing certain medicines, thus reducing the waiting time for patients.
The hospital has also redesigned the job scope of housekeeping staff, extending their responsibility to infection control and keeping the hospital's environment conducive for healing.
Increasing productivity can also help to ease bed crunch in the hospital.
CEO Liak Teng Lit said: "If the patient stays on average of five days and we have 500 beds, it means that on any single day we can admit 100 patients. However, let's say we work very, very hard, and we manage to diagnose the patient earlier by doing X-rays faster, by doing laboratory work faster, getting a senior doctor to see the patient earlier, and let's say we keep the patient's stay to an average of four days, (this) means on any day we can admit 125 patients."
Labour chief Lim Swee Say and some 60 unionists were at the hospital on Tuesday to find out more about the productivity measures adopted by KTPH.
The general secretary of Healthcare Services Employees' Union, Diana Chia, said it is heartening to see the health service sector applying innovative approaches to enhance its processes and services to achieve productivity growth.
The union said that apart from KTPH, it is also working closely with other hospitals to bring about better patient care.
Patrick Tay, deputy executive secretary of Healthcare Services Employees' Union, said: "It's going across all our unionised institutions, across all the hospitals to form productivity committees to look into various productivity initiatives."
- CNA/ir
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