Provide the Best Medical Service
Before Patient's Diagnosis
Types of Industry: Healthcare Industry
The Client: National Health Service (NHS)
The Designer: Huiyu Chang
The Project Aim: To explore an “in-between” service improving patients medical experience.
Time: 2021
From the 2019 British Social Attitudes survey, 57% of UK
residents responded negatively to GP and hospital appointment waiting times. Since 2016, NHS failed to meet the 18-week referral-to-treatment standard for planned care. As a result, over 1500 people remained for the Appointment for more than a year, and the patients experienced frustration.
However, the current NHS system faces staffing shortages and pressure in funding. For these reasons, there are
difficulties to shorten the waiting time. Hence, this project aimed to discover an excellent in-between service that could improve the patient experience while waiting for the diagnosis.
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The Research
Hunt Statement
The research aims to understand the patient's attitude and thought of waiting for a long time while using NHS and find a solution that could improve the patient experience
Target Audience
The participants focus on patients over 18s who have previous experience (both positive and negative) waiting for formal medical diagnosis with NHS and discovered their journey, attitude, pain points and needs.
The Research Process
Findings
4/8
interviewees mentioned that the NHS system was complicated. They expect explicit instruction or support from the organization.
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6/8
medical process ended up without a diagnosis (or closure): the feelings of these interviewees revealed negative.
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7/8
interviewees admitted that a better service was essential than the waiting time. Moreover, the result showed a disconnection between NHS and the patients.
16/17
participants from cart sorting thought medical staff professionalism is crucial. In addition, sufficient and correct information from the doctor was equally important for the users.
Insights
# Theme01: Evaluating the severity of illness
As the definition of severity was vague, patients relied on professionals for medical judgement. However, the patients thought the doctor might underestimate their conditions from the research. Perhaps this was related to the way people perceive things: they focus on what they consider essential.
# Theme03: Improving communication
There was a gap between patients and the medical profession: A lack of communication existed between the two sides of the research. To solve the problem, it is suggested that NHS improve the contact system.
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# Theme02: Reducing the perceived waiting time
The waiting time showed two dimensions: actual (measure) waiting time and perceived (subjective) waiting time. NHS should reduce the perceived waiting time to raise patient satisfaction.
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# Theme04: Taking control of the medical process
Patients were lack confidence in using the current NHS system as they feel unable to empower their medical procedures. However, as many health care choices have popped up in recent years, patients turn to the service that could keep on their ways.
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