Abstract
Objective: In our health check-up center it is standard practice to conduct stomach exams by endoscopy and it is possible to accept 60 persons per day for such exams. However, regarding appointment performance, vacant slots often occurred due to cancelations and reducing them had been an issue at our center. In this study, we established a new method to solve this problem.
Methods: In order to maximize the use of appointment slots on a daily basis, we created our own appointment slot management tool. It displays the current appointment situation and maximum number of appointments possible in calendar format, and enables the provision of commonly required appointment information to all persons in charge of appointments. Through checking the changing appointments situation from day to day, the system can be precisely updated in anticipation of cancelations. We also created a appointment performance management tool for use in combination with this tool and set up the system so that the appointment situation can be viewed from all terminals in our center by all staff concerned. Furthermore, as the system updates appointment performance data every day, achievement rates for annual targets can be checked on a daily basis.
Results: The use of the appointment slot management tool has made the acceptance of persons desiring stomach exams during the year more efficient and made it possible to reduce the number of wasted appointment slots to the maximum extent. As a result, annual examinee number achievement rates for each exam program were 96% or over. We were also able to achieve annual earnings targets.
Conclusion: We believe that our appointment slot management tool has been highly effective in reducing wasted appointment slots and in allowing the maximum number of appointments to be inserted. The combined use of this tool and our appointment performance management tool has made it possible to constantly monitor achievement rates for annual targets.
