CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The need for booking appointment by proxy has always been underemphasized

especially in this part of the world. However, the surge in the convid-19 pandemic

have more than ever, created the need to fill this gap. In solving this problem, there

should be a proper understanding of the scheduling and time management.

Appointment can be categorized in scheduled and unscheduled appointment.

Hospital Reservation means planning for the date, time and place of a clinical visit

to receive healthcare services. In general, there are 2 types of medical

appointmentsinclude- scheduled and unscheduled appointments. Making an

unscheduled appointment needs no reservation and only requires the patient to visit

the medical center while a scheduled appointment is done via the phone, SMS or

the Internet. Since patient flow management requires attention to 3 important

aspects of arrival of patients, service process, and queuing process in an outpatient

unit, appointment scheduling is considered as one of the important aspects of

patient workflow management, and a basic tool for controlling patient waiting times

is in the process of receiving health care services. The waiting time to visit a

physician is considered one of the most important indicators of patients’ access to

healthcare service. Also, simultaneous activities of several physicians in a hospital

outpatient ward, necessitates the need to share resources, such as space, personnel

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and equipment, and setting appointments in the out- patient ward is of special

importance (Jang H, 2010.)

Globally, health care sector is the pivot and integral part of human lives. Thus,

anyerror committed in the clinical services might leads to defect or termination of

life. Recently, information and Communication has been used extensively to

improve the various operations and services in the field of the health care service.

Patient appointment with the Doctor is one of the clinical services that have been

automated. Healthcare providers are motivated to reduce operation cost while

improving the quality of service. This has given rise to preventive medicine in order

to avoid disease, lessening the demand for emergency department and hospital stays

for sick people. The importance of Patient Scheduling cannot be underestimated in

the health care delivery landscape. Patient scheduling is a complex process that

performs a crucial role in health care. Patient scheduling performs several functions,

from allocating resources to patients in need of exams and allocation of surgery

rooms to on-demand appointment scheduling with Family Doctors working at

Primary Care clinics. A good appointment scheduling system encourages patient

and physician satisfaction, and as such, is an important component of healthcare.

The efficiency of health care delivery hinged solely on the effectiveness of the

Patient scheduling system. it reduces medical error among practitioner and also

reduce the number of unsatisfied patient. Appointment systems have been

extensively used to reduce patient waiting times and waiting-room congestion.Such

systems have the potential to increase access to medical resources while reducing
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cost, as well as staff and patient dissatisfaction derived from unmet schedule

constraints. The main aim of optimal patient scheduling is to determine an

appointment technique for which a particular measure of performance is optimized

under uncertain conditions.(E. Veral, 2003)

Appointment process is known to be one of the cumbersome tasks to handle in

many organizations and institutions, especially in the health sector. It is a task

which requires significant time and staff resource to properly manage. If

appointment tasks are not managed well in organizations, it could lead to the loss of

customers or clients, but if managed properly, it leads to the satisfaction of

customers and clients and increase productivity in that specific organization. It is

often alarming and disturbing to see patients who intend to visit hospitals for

medical care are asked to join long queues before they are able to see a doctor for

healthcare. Sometimes a patient might be having less threatening health issue which

does not consume much time, but instead he/she is constrained at the hospital.

Furthermore, in order for patients to jump these hospital queues, they resort to

paying sums of monies to receptionist to help them skip these queues to visit

doctors. All these unfortunate events cause patients to be dissatisfied when they

visit hospitals.

Different researchers agreed that main patient dissatisfaction is caused by long

waiting times. Cayirli (2003) defined access time as the time between patients’

request for the appointment and the time he is checked up. According to Veral,

waiting time is the time between consultation and the scheduled time while
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neglecting the early arrival of a patient(Veral, 2003). Different researchers defined

waiting /access time in different ways. Awell-designed appointment system

supposed to improve patients’ satisfaction by reducing cost and time of clinics and

hospitals especially in the busy lives we are leading today.

With the growing population need for more efficient ways to access a medical

treatment is also growing. Through an online appointment scheduling system, a

user gets access to the doctor's online webpage and can make an appointment with

online software. Patient/user can also provide additional medical history in advance,

giving adequate time to the doctor to prepare the necessary information for

consultation. In this way, online appointment scheduling systems are helping

doctors and the patients and making the healthcare delivery efficient. Nowadays

there are many kinds of online appointment tools available in the markets which are

easy to set up and not too much expensive. Online scheduling system offers value-

added services and lots of benefits to the doctors and patients. It makes the patient

appreciated by eliminating the hassle of long waiting times. Online appointment

systems are also getting popular because of its low-cost availability.

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT

This project work is to unravel the tedium of working with conventional

appointment system, where record entry and retrieval are still done manually. Using

these conventional moods of operation may pose delay in the administrative system,

where issues such as an instant retrieval of visitors (patients) information as with

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regards to tracking our clients either for medical checkups, appointments or shared

company . But this research work provides a basic appointment systemwhere

patients information is stored on visit to the hospital aiding proper storage, quick

information retrieval and maintenance of the record of the patients.

Some of the problems found in the manual method of appointment include

 An increase in the waiting time for appointments

 Frustration for customers, patients and staff

 Time consuming.

 Lack of efficiency.

 Needs to be physically present at the clinic.

 Can’t make appointments in advance for long intervals.

1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The Aim of this project is to create doctor- patient appointment management system

that will help doctors in their work and will also help patients to book doctor

appointments and view medical progress using Odoma Clinic as a case study.

The main objective of the thesis is to provide quality medical care to the patients

bybringing all medical practitioners of the hospital to a single platform so that

everybody caneasily access them and make appointments. The second objective is

to replace the currentmanual file keeping system with an online medical patient

database system.Other objectives of the study include

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  To Create Web based online Doctor Appointment management system.

 To manage all patients related information.

 To provide emergency information in critical situation.

1.3 SCOPE OF STUDY

The scope of the study is restricted to the development of a web-based doctor-

patient appointment management systemfor OODOMA clinic Idah, Kogi State.This

system is implemented for all the individuals who want to get booked by the

medical practitioners. The users can participate only if they have created an account

through the registration form and have provided their medical history. Once they

get registered themselves further they would not need to update their record as it

would be done automatically after each doctor’s visit.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

The numerous significance of web-based doctor-patient appointment

management system can be outlined as follows

 Simplifies the Work of Employees

 It is User-friendly

 Better Management of patients Schedule

 Allows patients to Book at Any Time and Place

 Saves patients and the Employees Tons of Time

 Patients Don’t Have to Wait Long Hours

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 The patients Want Convenience