Reducing Patient Waiting Time in an Outpatient Clinic: A Discrete Event Simulation (DES) Based Approach

摘要

In spite of the proliferation of information and the growth of medical technology, patient wait time remains a problem in today's healthcare systems. Patients frequently have negative experiences with healthcare waiting rooms, but their presence is necessary to receive treatment by a physician. The healthcare system is dominated by conditions of uncertainty-incomplete knowledge, ambiguity-dynamic system behavior, emergence-unpredictable event and complexity all of which impact the patient's wait time. To deal with these conditions and reduce patient dissatisfaction with wait times, the implementation of queueing theory is required. Different queueing theory formulas are reasonably accurate in predicting queue lengths and waiting times. Therefore, in this research, a queuing model is developed using a discrete event simulation (FlexSim). The healthcare center at Mississippi State University (MSU) is selected as a case example since patient wait time is a current bottleneck in its system. The purpose of the proposed model is to reduce patient wait time and improve the overall throughput of the system. Required data is collected and multiple scenarios are developed and analyzed to address uncertainties in the current system and optimal solutions pertaining to patient satisfaction is proposed.