Assessing the Early Stage of eHealth Adoption: A Case Study From a Community Hospital in Thailand

Abstract

In this paper, the authors implement and determine the success the eHealth adoption for queue management when it was first deployed for a community hospital setting in Thailand. The electronic queue system was first implemented to improve conventional operations; then extensive evaluations were conducted to measure the effectiveness for each stakeholder. The healthcare staff shared a common perception that the new system could reduce their workload and increase the efficacy of queue fairness. The overall patient satisfaction and actual waiting time patients spent at the nurse interview station improved significantly. The majority of the patients agreed that the notification for attention from the computerized system is more effective. The community healthcare has strong potential to adopt the eHealth system. Being more automated enabled a reduced burden of administration jobs and significantly reduced waiting times for patients. Patients responded that they had greater satisfaction after the introduction of the electronic queue system.