The Centers for Civic Initiatives (CCI) and the Health Center Tomislavgrad presented transparent patient waiting lists for healthcare services. With the goal of improving healthcare services, safeguarding citizens’ right to health, and ensuring better access to medical care, automated transparent waiting lists are now operational at the Health Center Tomislavgrad.
Patients, as users of public healthcare services, often do not understand the internal procedures of healthcare institutions for creating waiting lists, nor the institutions’ capacities and priorities. Without insight into how waiting lists are formed or access to the lists themselves, patients develop distrust in the public healthcare system and dissatisfaction with services. On the other hand, the lack of transparency and unclear processes create room for corruption and for patients to be scheduled “out of turn.” Creating transparent waiting lists provides patients with better access to information, eases the work of healthcare professionals, and improves and simplifies communication between patients and providers.
“By introducing transparent waiting lists at the Health Center Tomislavgrad, we aim to improve the quality of services for patients, reduce waiting times, increase transparency, and help prevent corruption in the healthcare sector in BiH. By strengthening transparency, accountability, and integrity, healthcare institutions across BiH can set examples of good practice for establishing further systemic preventive solutions. CCI welcomes all healthcare institutions that have adopted this system and calls on others to follow these good practices and implement transparent waiting lists to improve the healthcare system and ensure simpler and easier access to healthcare services,” said Asmir Ćilimković, Project Manager at the Centers for Civic Initiatives.
The Health Center Tomislavgrad has been provided with an appropriate software solution, compatible with its existing systems, for the public publication of patient waiting lists for the most important medical examinations and interventions. Currently, waiting lists are published for the most burdened services, with the possibility of expanding to other examinations and operations. The display of electronic waiting lists is available on the website: lc.dz-tomislavgrad.com.
“Our goal has always been to provide high-quality, timely, and accessible healthcare services to all our patients. Transparency allows us to work together to solve problems—it holds us accountable while giving patients the right to be informed. For that reason, transparent waiting lists represent a significant step forward in building trust in our work and in improving the organization of our institution. We have started with electronic transparent waiting lists in the Internal Medicine Department and the Radiology Department, and soon we plan to extend the system to other departments of the Health Center,” said Dr. Ivanka Živković, Specialist in Gynecology and Obstetrics and Director of the Health Center Tomislavgrad.
Through this system, patients can track their scheduled examinations at any time, see whether significant changes in scheduling occur, while the Health Center Tomislavgrad benefits from better management of waiting lists, monitoring of patient flows, and improved analytical and statistical tracking of service provision.
“We developed software for the automatic creation and public publication of waiting lists, which, after additional coordination and staff training, has been operationalized and is now in use. With this system, transparency has been significantly improved—citizens, that is, patients of Tomislavgrad, as well as representatives of civil society and the media, now have public access to waiting lists on the institution’s website. It is also important to note that the scheduling procedure itself is simple and adapted to all citizens,” said Mersad Avdić, Director of the Creativo Center.
One of the proven best ways to improve the quality of services and prevent corruption is to introduce the highest possible level of transparency. In line with this, the establishment of transparent patient waiting lists at the Health Center Tomislavgrad, as well as in other healthcare institutions across BiH, is vital for improving healthcare and restoring citizens’ trust in the public health system.