# Queue & Appointments

> A live digital queue and a booking system that knows who is waiting, who is overdue, and where the day is actually losing time.

Source: https://www.medicine.et/modules/queue-appointments  
Site: Bloom Medicine — https://www.medicine.et

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Waiting is the part of a clinic visit patients remember and the part nobody measures. Bloom Medicine turns the queue into data: who arrived, who they are waiting for, how long each stage took, and who never came back.

## The day drifts, and nobody can prove where

On a paper queue, the total visit time is invisible until the patient complains. Ethiopian outpatient studies measured total time in the facility ranging from 41 to 185 minutes — a four-fold spread that no clinic can manage without a timestamp on each stage.

The other half of the problem is the appointment that does not happen. Missed follow-up is not an empty chair, it is an interrupted course of treatment — and in Ethiopian chronic-care clinics it is the norm rather than the exception.

### Measured in Ethiopia

- **41–185 min** — total outpatient time per visit, Jimma Zone public hospitals ([source](https://www.medicine.et/research/outpatient-waiting-and-satisfaction))
- **39.2%** — of hypertensive patients across four South Gondar hospitals missed follow-up ([source](https://www.medicine.et/research/missed-appointments))

## What it does

- **Live queue by room and role** — Separate queues for triage, consultation, lab, pharmacy and cashier — each showing who is waiting and for how long.
- **Timestamped stages** — Arrival, called, seen, dispensed, paid. The gaps between them are where the day is lost, and they become reportable.
- **Appointment booking** — Book the next review before the patient leaves the room, against the clinician who will actually be there.
- **Overdue follow-up lists** — Patients who missed their appointment surface as a worklist to call, not as an absence nobody noticed.
- **Reminders** — Scheduled SMS reminders ahead of the appointment, with the response recorded against the booking.
- **Load visibility** — See the shape of the day — arrivals per hour, average wait per stage — and staff the peaks rather than the average.

## How it runs in the day

1. **Arrival is recorded** — Check-in stamps the arrival time and places the patient in the first queue. The clock starts here, not when the clinician remembers.
2. **Rooms pull, they do not shout** — Each room calls the next patient from its own queue, so the order is visible to everyone and disputes stop.
3. **The next visit is booked in the room** — Follow-up is scheduled at the point of decision, while the reason for it is still on screen.
4. **Misses become a call list** — Anyone who does not arrive rolls into an overdue list with their phone number and their last visit reason.

## What changes

- Waiting time becomes a number you can act on instead of a complaint.
- Follow-up patients get chased in the week they were due, not months later.
- Peak-hour staffing decisions rest on your own arrival data.

## Related calculators

- [No-Show Cost Calculator](https://www.medicine.et/tools/no-show-cost-calculator)

## Cited research

- [What actually drives outpatient satisfaction in Ethiopia](https://www.medicine.et/research/outpatient-waiting-and-satisfaction) — Pooled satisfaction with outpatient care in Ethiopian public hospitals is 61.95%. The meta-analysis findings are not what most clinics assume: getting all your prescribed drugs and having your privacy respected outweigh almost everything else.
- [Missed appointments in Ethiopia are a clinical failure, not an empty chair](https://www.medicine.et/research/missed-appointments) — 39.2% of hypertensive patients in South Gondar follow-up clinics missed their appointments. In HIV care, 93% of patients lost to follow-up disappeared within six months. The Ethiopian evidence measures the harm, not the lost revenue.

## Related reading

- [The Ninety-Minute Wait](https://www.medicine.et/blog/the-ninety-minute-wait) — At one Ethiopian referral hospital, the average outpatient waited 90 minutes to be seen — and only 14% were seen inside the 50-minute mark. The measured causes are not clinical. They are clerical.
- [Seven Ways to Reduce No-Shows in Your Clinic](https://www.medicine.et/blog/reduce-no-shows-in-your-clinic) — Empty appointment slots quietly drain revenue and disrupt your schedule. Here are seven practical, low-cost tactics that consistently bring patients back through the door.