Addressing Patient Waiting Times in Low-Resource Environments

Long patient waiting times are widely prevalent in healthcare settings across the world and negatively impact patient experience. We examine the notion of patient waiting time in two distinct low-resource Indian contexts, analyzing our empirical findings as they relate to (1) actual waiting time or the actual time spent in the clinic, (2) perceived waiting time or the time the patient thinks he/she waited, and (3) preventable waiting time, which refers to the increased patient load due to patients lack of awareness and/or lack of skill for self-management of chronic illnesses. We also provide design recommendations to suggest how existing ICT applications might be leveraged to address these dimensions of patient waiting time in low-resource healthcare environments.