การพัฒนากระบวนการจำหน่ายผู้ป่วยในหอผู้ป่วยพิเศษ โรงพยาบาลลำพูน

Abstract

Delay in patient discharge causes patient dissatisfaction with health care services and also adversely affects hospital revenue. The purpose of this developmental study was to develop a patient discharge process in the private ward of Lamphun Hospital. Study methodology was guided by Womack and Jones’s Lean concept (2003). The study population included 8 nursing staff working in private ward and 4 hospital managers. The research instruments used included 1) the patient discharge flow chart, 2) value analysis form, 3) time spent in activities record form, and 4) interview guidelines regarding problems in the new patient discharge process. Data were collected by observing time spent of each activity in the patient discharge process and were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results were as follows: 1. The new patient discharge process was developed. It consisted of 4 major activities with several minor activities. 2. The previous patient discharge process was 159.60 minutes on average where as the new patient discharge process was 129.29 minutes on average. Discharge times decreased by 30.31 minutes. 3. The new process still had some problems, including delays in rechecking hospital bills and transferred patients from the ward. The results of the study show that the development of a working process using the Lean concept is applicable, decreases working time, and maintains quality of nursing services. Nursing administrators can apply the Lean concept to improve quality of services in other departments in the hospital.