Current Thoracic Surgery 2023 , Vol 8 , Issue 2
Analysis of erroneous appointments from the thoracic surgery outpatient clinic of a training hospital
Ekin Zorlu1,Önder Kavurmacı1
1Department of Thoracic Surgery, University of Health Sciences, Bozyaka Izmir Education and Research Hospital, Izmir, Turkey DOI : 10.26663/cts.2023.0016 Viewed : 1040 - Downloaded : 309 Background: Applications of patients to the outpatient clinics of health institutions are not subject to any control and are left to the patient’s choice. System is confused by patients, especially in close specialties, and patients make appointments from the outpatient clinic, which is unrelated to their complaints. Likewise, a group of patients does not come to arbitrary appointments. Making an erroneous appointment or failing to attend an appointment causes a serious loss of time for physicians and other patients. Appointments from an outpatient clinic not related to the disease. In our study, the data of patients who made an incorrect appointment from our outpatient clinic in the last one year and did not come to their appointment were analyzed retrospectively.

Materials and Methods: The data of patients who made an incorrect appointment from our outpatient clinic and did not come to their appointments within a year using central physician appointment system were analyzed retrospectively.

Results: Of 1482 patients who made an appointment through the central physician appointment system, 278 (18.8%) did not come to their appointment. 128 (8.6%) patients had an incorrect appointment.

Conclusions: Organizing outpatient clinic appointments through the central system aims to enable patients to reach the service more easily and to benefit from the outpatient clinic service at a time convenient for them. It is a common situation that patients do not come to their appointments or make an incorrect appointment, causing unnecessary loss of workforce and the inability of other patients who request outpatient services to get an appointment. Keywords : thoracic surgery, outpatient clinic, central physician appointment system, erroneous appointments