Evaluation Of The Blue Card System In The

Process Of Improving Waiting Time In

Outpatient Pharmacy Department Hospital
Seberang Jaya.

By
Yassini Maniam
Advisor
Ms Tan Siao Yin

September 2010
1.0 INTRODUCTION
In an era of ever-decreasing reimbursement for Healthcare services, increased fiscal
restraint, and a very real shortage of critical professionals, an urgent need exists for imaginative
approaches for increasing efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of healthcare services. This
case study describes one such effort pursued in the outpatient pharmacy in Hospital Seberang
Jaya. Significant change were introduced and sustained by utilizing simple but innovative
method for involving an extremely busy work group in the problem identification, root-cause
analysis, solution generation, and ultimate implementation of a major process improvement. The
greatest area of customer dissatisfaction in pharmacies is wait times. Since there were many
opportunities for improvement, it was decided that the best approach would be to work on
several areas in parallel while focusing on patient satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and
improving overall business processes.

Outpatient department is the important department of the hospital which serves major
of the patients. Patients spend a lot of time in each unit such as medical record service unit,
physical examination unit, laboratory unit, billing unit and pharmacy unit. They expect a
comfortable and fast services from all outpatient department. The patient satisfaction should be
created in order to make them impressed which is good not only for outpatient department but
also for the hospital image.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the blue card system in the process of
Improving waiting time in outpatient pharmacy department in Hospital Seberang Jaya.

Blue card system in outpatient pharmacy design in which a prescription is fill

before patient arrive at outpatient pharmacy to collect their medicine. Pharmacist located at the
dispensing area speaks with each patient before the prescription is processed is dispensed, and
the effect of patients' waiting time and satisfaction is reported. The pharmacist promptly
identifies and resolves any problem associated with a prescription or medication profile. The
prescription then enters the dispensing work area, which was also redesigned to improve
efficiency; patients now pick up their medications at a special counter on the opposite end of the
dispensing area from where the pharmacist initially receives the prescription. Workload data and
waiting times before and after implementation of the blue card system showed that prescriptions
could be processed more quickly under the new system; average waiting times decreased from
more than one hour to 30 minutes. Interviews of randomly selected patients indicated that the
reduced waiting times led to increased patient satisfaction. The blue card design appeared to
improve work flow and to improve patient satisfaction by decreasing waiting times.

Williams, Shepherd, and Jowdy (1983) published a paper that compared the workload
of an outpatient pharmacy before and after the implementation of a call-in prescription refill
system. The study involved the outpatient pharmacy at Eisenhower Army Medical Center in
Georgia (Williams, Shepherd, & Jowdy, 1983). According to the authors, such a system would
do two things for the outpatient pharmacy. First, patient wait time could be reduced and second,
prescription volume could be planned and staffing programmed accordingly (Williams,
Shepherd, & Jowdy, 1983).
2.0 OBJECTIVES
2.1 Main objective
 To determine the awareness of patient’s knowledge on Blue card system

2.2 Specific Objective

 To evaluate patient’s waiting time at outpatient pharmacy department
 To determine if the implementation of the blue card system, improve patient’s
satisfaction at the outpatient pharmacy department.

3.0 METHODOLOGY
The research is based on descriptive observational survey by interviewing patients who
follow up using blue card system at Outpatient Pharmacy Department in Hospital Seberang
Jaya. This survey is conducted between 1 July 2010 until 30 September 2010 at Pharmacy
Department in Hospital Seberang Jaya.

4.0 Criteria
4.1 Inclusion Criteria
Patient who follow up using the blue card system with repetitive date or part supply
4.2 Exclusion Criteria
New prescription of blue card system

5.0 Conclusion
 Hope that this blue card system will be beneficial by decreasing patient’s wait time and
improve patient’s satisfaction towards outpatient pharmacy department
 If the response is good then we shall create a special counter to dispense the blue card
system prescription and increase the number of patient using the blue card.
References

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