Positive Patient Experience on Specialist Outpatient Service

The recently published report of Patient Experience Survey (PES) on Specialist Outpatient Service (SOPS) 2018 reflects an overall positive experience on SOPS with nearly 90% of respondents rating 7 or above (along a scoring scale of 0 – 10). The mean score is 7.9 out of 10, which is higher than that of the previous PES on SOPS in 2014.

The survey was conducted from July 2018 to March 2019. Around 14,000 randomly selected patients attending 26 selected Specialist Outpatient Clinics (SOPCs) were interviewed by phone about the patient journey from ‘before appointment’ to ‘leaving the clinic’. Majority of the respondents gave high ratings towards multiple care aspects including confidence and trust in doctors, provision of clear and understandable information on how to take medication and their purposes, and being treated with respect and dignity. Meanwhile, there is room for improvement in several areas including information on waiting time, provision of post-discharge information on danger signals and contact, and posters about hand sanitation in SOPCs.

HA expresses gratitude to frontline staff for their contributions and will study the findings of the Survey in detail to continuously improve the quality of SOPS, for example, exploring how to provide patients with more post-discharge information on self-care. Moreover, HA is developing a Queue Management System through which patients could know the queuing time required for consultation.