Computerized patient visit data analysis for the outpatient department of Jeddah General Hospital

Hospitals play a vital role in the service of any community. In order that they may provide good quality service efficiently and at a reasonable cost, it is essential that they be properly managed. The development of a management information system (MIS) is a sine qua non for fulfilling this kind of need. With the above realization in mind, a computerized MIS is being developed for the Jeddah General Hospital, which was started only a few years ago. This paper describes the computerized analysis of the outpatient department's data so as to report it to the management as a part of the overall MIS. First, statistics such as number of patients/clinic/day, new and follow-up cases, male and female patients, time per patient, absentees, etc., are generated. These are then analyzed by using computers and are incorporated in the reports to be presented to the management on a periodic basis. The computer programming is in BASIC language so that mini-computers may be used for this purpose. The paper also discusses the possibilities of future enlargement of this work.