OPD Waiting Time and Patient Satisfaction in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Quality Audit from India

Background: In a busy teaching hospital, controlling outpatient traffic isn’t as easy as it first looks. Doctors arrive late—yeah, you know how that goes—patients are waiting in line from early in the morning, and by midmorning, the waiting room is disorganized. We conducted this audit to understand how waiting time in our OPD relates to what patients actually think of the service — not as an abstract quality metric, but as a practical question that shapes whether people come back. Methods: We surveyed approximately 300 patients across fifteen anonymised OPD departments at a tertiary care teaching hospital in India during early 2026, using a structured questionnaire covering demographics, eleven service quality items on a Likert scale, and an overall satisfaction rating. Data were analysed using frequency analysis, mean scores, Pearson correlation, chi-square testing, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Department names have been replaced with neutral labels and waiting times are reported as standardised bands to ensure institutional confidentiality. Findings: Subject's overall satisfaction rating on the 5.00 point scale was 4.02. Hospitals with high productivity had an average waiting time of less than 5 minutes; those with greater productivity had an average waiting time greater than 20 minutes. There was found to be a statistically significant negative relationship between waiting time and level of satisfaction (p<0.05). Patients consistently rated the following as being inadequate in waiting areas: availability of drinking water, restrooms and ventilation. The patient's excellent rating of physician's communication was consistent across all areas. Conclusions: Clinical quality in this OPD performs well. The gap lies in the physical environment and basic amenities patients experience before they ever see a doctor. These are addressable problems, and this paper documents what we found and what needs to change.