The Referral and Booking Centre at the Hamad Hospital, which introduced a fixed appointment system earlier this year, has received a total of 50,816 referrals from May last year to date, it is learnt.

The centre also received some 45,520 referrals triage (doctors’ referrals) during the same period.

While a total of 42,398 patients were contacted for hospital appointments, some 40,322 appointment were booked during the same time.

The Hamad Medical Corporation’s call centre also made a similar number of calls to remind patients of their appointments.

Speaking about the fixed appointment system, Hamad Medical Corporation-based Centre for Healthcare Improvement (CHI) director Nasser al-Noaimi noted that the system has been going on well aside for some teething problems, which usually come with any new process.

“The new fixed appointment system is going on well, although it is not without glitches, but so far, we have been able to cope.

“However, we will like to hear any comment or suggestions for improvement from our patients because we believe their suggestions can help us in a great way,” he stated.

“Because patients have to arrive at the hospital 20 minutes before the appointment time, it is still a problem for some of them, who couldn’t keep to the appointment time,” he said.

Al-Noaimi also urged patients to always provide correct contact details when making hospital appointments.

“We have discovered that many patients’ contacts do not exist when we need to remind them of their appointments. This is also leading to no-shows. Many patients are denied of chance to see doctors due to this,” he maintained.

The official said that HMC managing director Dr Hanan al-Kuwari has directed the CHI to begin work on introducing the fixed time appointment system at the Rumailah Hospital as well as the Dentistry and the Heart Hospital.

“We are hoping to start using the fixed appointment system in those hospitals before the end of the year,” he said.

The fixed time appointment system has helped reduce the waiting time for Qataris for first visits to two weeks, and four weeks for non-Qataris, Al-Noaimi said.

The official also said that plans are on to achieve the target of making the waiting time for cancer patients to within 48 hours.

Al-Noaimi also revealed plans to announce the completion and launching of some 360 projects awarded by the centre across all HMC hospitals, which focus on the tripartite role of the HMC – research, education and health.

“These projects are under the programme which we launched three years ago and we are going to be unveiling them during a big event coming up in October,” he said.