Modeling Telephone Access to Wilford Hall Medical Center and Its Busiest Appointment Sites

摘要

Telephone traffic into Wilford Hall Medical Center and its busiest appointment centers was simulated at the busiest hour of the month to explore alternatives for improving telephone access to health care. Telephone access to care was defined in two parts: 1) decreasing calls blocked (overflow) of the central commercial switch; and, 2) increasing the number of calls answered at the decentralized appointment sites, which operate with automatic call distributors. Methods for improving current call data reporting procedures were developed. Avenues for feeding back operator performance data to the appointment sites were constructed which may serve as a management control system for monitoring continuous and sustained improvement in the telephone access at each appointment site. The simulation gave insight into how to manage call traffic to decrease the number of commercial lines leased while ensuring a minimum of overflow traffic. Simple changes to the length of the queue of the call distributors and to when new appointments are made available could dramatically decrease the load on the network at the busiest hour of the month. Keywords: Health care facilities, Digital simulation, Queuing theory, Theses. (SDW/KT)