The waiting list for cardiac surgery is not a queue. It's a dynamic population of patients in varying clinical states, with different sponsorship statuses, different diagnostic completeness levels, different urgency classifications, and different blood availability situations — all of which change independently and simultaneously. Managing it as a static list ordered by presentation date guarantees that patients who should be prioritized on clinical grounds get missed, and that administrative bottlenecks become invisible until they cause a preventable delay.
The Clinical State at Any Moment
Diagnosis with the specific lesion fields — SVD, D/TVD, IHD, Other — captures the cardiac pathology profile that drives the clinical urgency calculation. A patient with triple-vessel disease and reduced ejection fraction on the waiting list is a different clinical situation from a single-vessel patient with preserved function. Both are waiting; the urgency classification URGENT is the field that flags when the clinical picture demands the next available slot rather than the next chronological slot.
ECHO, ECHO Report 1, and ECHO Report 2 with ANGIO and ANGIO Report document the diagnostic workup status. A patient can be on the waiting list but not yet cleared for theatre because the echocardiogram was done but the angiogram hasn't been scheduled, or because the ECHO report is pending reporting. Status Post captures what interventions the patient has already had — a prior CABG or stenting history changes the operative planning and the risk profile.
HbA1c and HbA1c date are the metabolic readiness fields. Diabetic patients require HbA1c control before elective cardiac surgery — most centres require a value below 8.0%. The date is critical because a compliant HbA1c from three months ago may not reflect the current state if the patient's glycaemic management has changed. The Diabetic flag with the dated HbA1c value together give the pre-op screening team what they need to determine whether the patient is currently theatre-ready.
Sponsorship and Administrative Clearance
MOH Sponsorship and MOH S. date are the financial clearance fields. Ministry of Health sponsorship authorization has an expiry window in many Gulf health systems — a patient whose MOH authorization was received six months ago may require renewal before admission can proceed. Without a dedicated sponsorship date field, those renewals get missed until the patient is already scheduled, creating last-minute cancellations that affect theatre utilization and the patient's wait time.
Recommendation and Targets capture the referring physician's guidance and the planned surgical targets — the specific vessels for grafting, the valves for repair or replacement. Having these in the record before the pre-admission assessment means the surgical team reviews a complete picture, not a diagnosis alone.
Blood and Call-In Logistics
Blood, Blood group, Blood status, and Donation date are the blood management fields. For operations requiring significant blood product availability, a patient with a rare blood group or a specific antibody profile requires advance preparation that the blood bank needs lead time to organize. Blood status — whether compatible units are available, reserved, or still being sourced — is real-time logistic information that affects the admission date as much as the MOH clearance does.
Mobile 1, On Call-in 1, Mobile 2, On Call-in 2, and Landline with On Call-in handle the contact strategy when a slot opens and the patient needs to be reached. Cardiac theatre slots fill and open on short notice. A patient who can't be reached when their number comes up moves to the back of the line. The multi-contact structure with separate call-in flags ensures that the scheduling team knows which numbers reach the patient directly versus which reach a family member who can relay the call-in — a meaningful operational distinction at 6 AM when a next-day slot is available.