Improving Timeliness of Diagnostic Healthcare Services: Effective Strategies and Recommendations.

Timeliness and accessibility of healthcare services reflect system's capacity to provide care quickly after a need is recognized. King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia worked on improving timeliness of diagnostic electromyography and nerve conduction study for carpel tunnel syndrome and peripheral neuropathy patients to avoid significant treatment delay and potential complications. We identified causes of delayed appointments and implemented strategies to reduce it from 12 to 2 weeks. FOCUS PDCA approach as well as Pareto analysis were used to identify and target core issues then suggest effective strategies including improving staff productivity, enhancing teamwork coordination and motivating healthcare team stakeholders. The results show that 93% of appointments were made available in less than 2 weeks, compared to only 8% pre-improvement, no show rate reduced to 2% compared to 13% and total procedure volume was increased to 99 compared to 52 per month.