How long do your patient wait?

Specialties Oncology

Published

I'm working on a project in our chemo clinic in an effort to decrease the patient wait time. I'm wondering what other processes are like elsewhere and also how long your patients typically wait.

I'm finding our greatest delay is with pharmacy verifying pre-meds. After the dr enters orders, our average time for pharmacy to verify is 18min, but is up to 1hr at times. How long does it take your pharmacist to verify orders? Also, do your orders for pre-meds have to be renewed each visit before you can give the pre-meds?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in retired LTC.

to OP - I don't work your specialty so I don't have any suggestions re your meds questions, but I do suggest that you change your screen name. You don't want to annoy any pharmacists who may know you and be members of this site. Likewise there may be others here who know you.

FWIW, I'm having very nice thoughts re your name. It is very pleasant.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Chemo wait times can vary from clinic to clinic. Much has to do with the size of the clinic. The larger the place, the longer the waits. 18 minutes is not too bad, considering some larger cancer centers, people can wait, on average over 2 hours from initial lab draw to the start of their infusion.

If a pt is getting the same regimen, you should not have to re-verify premeds. I find it a little odd that the pharmacy has to verify pre-meds each time. Unless your doctors routinely make changes in a dose such as the dex. Some pharmacies will pre-mixed some pre-meds so when the pt is brought back to infusion, and their IV started, the pre-med can be ready to go. Although some places I have seen will make nothing until the pt is sitting in the chair and all boxes checked and they are good to go. I am not sure why pre-meds have to be such a contention, but they often are. Personally I think it could be a control issue (ha ha), but I truly think that until the pts voice complaints about wait times in getting started, will the admin step in to change some of pharmacies policies.

Best of luck....

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment