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Just walk in to meet your GP

Last month, a private hospital in the emirate had announced that it will penalise patients Dh50 if they do not show up for appointments.

The new system will help reduce waiting times, and consultation slots of healthcare practitioners will be optimised as the walk-in method eliminates the problem of last-minute cancellations by patients, said Dr Ahmad Al Kalban, CEO of Primary Healthcare. All 14 DHA primary healthcare centres will adopt this new system from April 10.

“This decision has been taken to encourage patients to visit family medicine specialists and to consider them as their first point of contact,” he added. The primary healthcare centres have family medicine specialists based on the capacity of the centre and range from four to six doctors. Each doctor can see 25 to 30 patients per day and therefore the centres will be able to cope with the demand.

For specialised services such as ophthalmology, dermatology, child health, gynecology, maternity and geriatric care which are available at the primary healthcare centres, the system of appointments will continue. Kalban said that emergency patients will be seen immediately and will get priority, adding that dental emergencies will also be seen at any time during the working hours at the centres.

According to Advet Bhambhani, head of Lifeline Hospital Jebel Ali that introduced the fines, patients not showing up for the appointment had dropped to two from 10 per cent since the policy was introduced. “When patients do not show up for appointments, they waste resources ... doctors sit idle when they could have been attending to some other patient,” he said.

“We can understand if it is an emergency, but that is a rare occurrence as most of the time it is just a case of irresponsibility,” he added. The hospital, however, has adopted a strict reminder system with patients and requires a cancellation at least 24 hours before the scheduled appointment.

asmaalizain@khaleejtimes.com