Perth Metropolitan Hospital Chemotherapy Day Unit Waiting Times and Patient Satisfaction — ASN Events
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Perth Metropolitan Hospital Chemotherapy Day Unit Waiting Times and Patient Satisfaction (#315)

Siao Nge Hoon 1 , Jade Newton 2 , Scott G Taylor 3 , Joseph P Mctigue 3 , Claire Johnson 3 , Peter KH Lau 4 5
  1. Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  2. University of Western Australia, Perth , Western Australia, Australia
  3. Cancer and Palliative Care Research and Evaluation Unit,, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  4. Department of Health Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
  5. Cancer Medicine, Peter MaCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Aims
Due to growing caseload and survival, Chemotherapy Day Units (CDU) have rising capacity constraints, which impacts on efficiency. Consequently patients allocated to treatment the same day (TSD) as their medical oncology outpatient appointments (OPA) face increasing waiting times. As part of a patient preference survey of OPA and chemotherapy infusion scheduling we evaluated waiting times for chemotherapy, waiting time satisfaction and preferred treatment time. Socio-economic, transport and cancer factors were also profiled in this survey.

Methods
Patients from three tertiary public hospitals in Perth completed the survey. Eligibility criteria included any adult cancer patient receiving intravenous chemotherapy or biologic agent and completion of at least one treatment cycle. Patients completed the survey whilst receiving their infusion.

Results
From a total cohort of 432, 223 TSD allocated patients completed the survey between 5/5/2014 and 26/9/2014. Only 15.3% of patients were ideally prepared to wait a maximum of 90 minutes for their chemotherapy after OPA. The majority (of patients (88%) received chemotherapy within 90 minutes of their OPA, with 25.5% receiving chemotherapy within 30 minutes. However, 61.5% of patients reported they were satisfied with the time waited for chemotherapy. The majority of patients preferred chemotherapy to be delivered in the morning between 8am and 12noon (83.3%).

Conclusion
Patients are generally satisfied with their chemotherapy waiting times. We propose a key performance indicator of waiting times for chemotherapy of no more than 90 minutes after their OPA. This benchmark is acceptable to patients and achievable by CDU’s but may require a symmetrical increase in workforce and infrastructure for sustainability.

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