Niruwan Turnbull*, Faculty of Public Health, Mahasarakham University, THAILAND, Khuntarawichai, Thailand Track: Research Presentation Topic: Health information on the web: Supply and Demand Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Referral patients in local hospital in Thailand set up to sent the patient from one facility to another facility including their information and history of the patient's illness, purposing for further diagnosis or medical treatment. The prior system used paper form to fill patient’s information for all non-emergency patients and patients in the emergency situation. This causes some problems with the complexity, delay, long queue and mistake writing the reasons. Therefore, sometimes patient’s relative decided to get through the main hospital without waiting to the paper form from local hospital.
Objective: The research created online database using electronics information system to record the referral form for the patients who need to refer from a district hospitals to the Health Promoting Hospital at Kantararom district, Si Sa Ket province, Thailand.
Methods: The research conducted the group of a 54 participants, which included IT’s expert, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and public health employing two questionnaires to collect the data including a) the IT Experts’ opinions to the program and b) the satisfaction from the users who using the online referral system; the data were analyzed with descriptive statistics including Percentage, Averages and Standard Deviations (SD).
Results: The results showed that most the participants were great satisfied for the Online Referral System. As well as both IT Experts’ and the program users including Function Test (mean=4.76, SD=0.15), program security (mean = 4.53, SD= 0.09), Usability Test (mean=3.89, SD=0.08), and Function Requirement Test (mean=3.76, SD=0.24). the users were found that online referral program was easy to find patient’s information (mean=3.56, SD=0.94), reduced the time on the routine working steps for the staffs (mean=3.24, SD=1.11) as well as it should encourage to apply online referral system for local community (mean=3.17, SD=1.17).
Conclusions: Online system is a rapidly developing area and is gaining increasingly importance in all sectors of healthcare system. The results of a successful implementation of the online referral system had made supporting patients system to receive quickly medical treatment, which enhance of the patient management in the case of patient who needs emergency attention. It is hoped that these findings will make a significant contribution by informing the policy makers to investment the online referral program for all local hospitals to reduce the time and the pressure of the healthcare professionals who needs quickly work of all healthcare sectors.