The Hospital Startup
I dislike visiting hospitals.
The last two weeks have been stressful : traveled out of state past two weekends back to back and also participating in a 7 day intensive management acceleration programme at the Lagos Business School. I decided to visit the hospital because I was not feeling a 100%.
Got to this hospital, let’s call it FC hospital, at 6:28pm.
Walked in, dropped by HMO card with the receptionist, she politely asks when was the last time I visited which i responded to and she asks me to have a seat, there was only 1 person waiting. 20 minutes later, I was still sitting there.
I get summoned by a nurse to have my vitals taken, she skips checking my pulse but got body temperature, weight & blood pressure which is fine with me. Waited another 17 minutes before it was my turn to see the doctor.
Immediately I got into the Doctor’s office, he asks me:
“What is your problem?”
I was sincerely shocked by how he asked that question so I pretended I didn’t hear this young Doctor properly and asked him to repeat the question:
“What is your problem?”
I proceeded to discuss my “problems” with him, we went through the motion. Left his office with my file in hand, headed to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. I waited another 20 minutes at least for the nurse to prepare some papers for me to sign and give me my medication.
In all, I spent 1hour 20 minutes thereabouts at the hospital, total interaction time with staff was less than 30 minutes, the rest was spent waiting. It was excruciating particularly because my phone battery was dead!
- Could some of the interaction have been from my home?
- Is wait time/patient “turnaround” time a key performance indicator for hospitals?
- Could they have leveraged technology to accelerate delivery?
I am not an expert in how hospitals should run but from a customer point of view, I think if most hospitals really focus on customers and operate/think like startups, they can provide better service. So I’m looking forward to the ‘hospital startup’ that I can use tomorrow or I’ll read about soon or one I can invest my money in in a couple of years.
