Magister Public Health - MPH / Long waiting times have, for many years, been synonymous with primary health care in
South Africa, and this is evident by the long queues and consistent client dissatisfaction.
There are multiple contributing factors that exacerbate waiting time in Primary Health Care
(PHC) facilities such as shortage of health care providers, increase in the uninsured
population and South Africa’s quadruple burden of diseases. Health establishments have
initiated numerous strategies to reduce long waiting times with varying degrees of success.
These strategies have mostly been quantified and linked to indicators to measure their level
of success in relation to quality healthcare. This research explores the clients’ perception of
one such intervention, which is the implementation of an appointment system in primary care
facilities in the City of Cape Town.
Qualitative, exploratory descriptive methods were used to gain understanding of the impact
the appointment system has had on the clients’ experience of attending health care services.
The researcher also explored how clients perceive their role with regard to the shaping of
their clinic’s appointment system. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with
fifteen purposively sampled clients from five City Health clinics, who have implemented an
appointment system through the guidance of the Appointment System Learning Initiative
(ASLI). Maximum variation in sampling ensured the inclusion of small, medium and larger
facilities within different geographical settings. Data analysis was done using a thematic
coding approach, the themes were derived from the emerging data and were used to guide the
researcher in gaining a rich picture of the clients’ experiences within the clinics. Ethical
approval was requested and received from both the University of the Western Cape (UWC)
and City Health prior to engaging any participants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/6731 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Sparks, René Liezel |
| Contributors | Lehmann, Uta |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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