Developing an Advance Appointment Booking System for Service Recipients through the Mor Prom Application at Chebilang Sub-District Health Promoting Hospital, Mueang Satun District, Satun Province

Abstract

Currently, the overcrowding of patients waiting for services in various government hospitals and sub-district health promoting hospitals is a problem that results in patients receiving increasingly delayed services and reduced satisfaction. The waiting time reflects
the quality of services and affects the satisfaction of service recipients. This research
and development aimed to develop an advance appointment booking system for service recipients through the Mor Prom application at Chebilang sub-district health promoting hospital, Mueang Satun district, Satun province. The research was divided into 3 phases: 1) Studying
the problem; 2) Developing an advance appointment booking system, testing the system, and improving the system; 3) Evaluating the waiting time and satisfaction of service recipients.
The sample group included 6 personnel, covering doctors, professional nurses and information officers, and also 80 service recipients. Deta were collected from July to August 2024
by observing, interviewing, recording the waiting time and the satisfaction questionnaire.
The quality of the tools was verified by 3 experts with the index of consistency illustrating as 0.67 - 1.00 which the satisfaction questionnaire and the appointment booking system had the IOC as 0.86 and 0.82 respectively. Data were analyzed by number, percentage, mean and standard deviation. In addition, to compare waiting time of service recipients before and after using the advance appointment booking system, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and content analysis were applied. The study found that the original service system used a queue card system
for appointments, did not specify appointment times or limit the number of appointments, lacked an advance booking system, and resulted in all service recipients arriving at the facility's opening time, causing congestion in front of the examination rooms. The development of the advance booking system via the Mor Prom application allowed service recipients to schedule appointments at convenient times. This reduced the average waiting time from 60 minutes and 30 seconds to 20 minutes and 10 seconds, a difference that was statistically significant (p < .05). Service recipients reported high levels of satisfaction with both the service quality and the new advance booking system via the Mor Prom application. Therefore, implementing an advance booking system through the Mor Prom application is an appropriate solution to reduce waiting times and increase service recipients' satisfaction in accessing health services."