Improving outpatient services for elderly patients in Taiwan: a qualitative study

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Healthcare Management
• Quality Improvement

Background:

• Global population aging necessitates age-friendly healthcare systems.
• Evaluating outpatient services for elderly patients is crucial for quality improvement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess and enhance the quality of outpatient services for elderly patients in Taiwan.
• To apply an integrated ANP-QFD approach to identify key patient needs and service attributes.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Kano's model to understand elderly patients' medical care needs.
• Employed the analytic network process (ANP) integrated with Quality Function Deployment (QFD).
• Adapted ANP's supermatrix for the House of Quality (HoQ) to minimize subjective judgments.

Main Results:

• Identified top elderly patient needs: professional medical care (27%), knowledgeable staff (23.5%), fast service (19.3%), voluntary service (19.1%), and proper equipment (11.1%).
• Determined key outpatient service attributes for improvement: physician professionalism (25%), staff communication (22%), standardized procedures (18%), staff training (15%), facility adequacy (10%), and IT application (10%).

Conclusions:

• An integrated ANP-QFD model was developed to improve outpatient service quality for the elderly.
• The model aims to reduce costs and pinpoint critical service elements for enhanced elderly care.