The 08:30 clinic slot that never opened the door
A full outpatient diary and a crowded corridor can both be true. Watch when the door actually opens, not only how many names were booked.
Outpatient leads are often blamed for a corridor they do not control. The diary is full. The first name is booked at 08:30. At 09:10 the door has not opened because the room is still being used for a ward call, or the consultant is finishing notes from yesterday, or two lists were given the same door.
Tamar maps one stream at a time. Two Tuesdays of the same clinic are worth more than a month of mixed specialties. People arrive according to the printed list. The queue that forms is a physical fact: who stands, who sits on the only bench, who is called late because a walk-in was taken first and never written down.
The 08:30 slot is the usual liar. If it exists only on paper, every later slot is already late before the second patient sits down. Drawing that first gap — door-open time against booked time — is less elegant than a heat map and more likely to be believed, because the outpatient lead was standing there when the door stayed shut.
We do not interview patients about satisfaction. We do not redesign the building. We will say when the diary cannot show walk-ins. If you want the map to match the morning you remember, bring the printed list from that morning, coffee stains included.