Track: Operations Research

Abstract

Delayed healthcare service delivery is major highlighted problem in healthcare centers and is caused due to poor design of queuing system or its mismanagement. This study was conducted to suggest the optimum number of receptionists and doctors at the study areas in order to optimize the existing queuing system at the OPDs. The most congested OPD i.e. medical OPD was selected for the study at the case hospital 1 and then same OPD was selected in another public sector hospital (case hospital 2). Data was collected for two weeks: data collection parameters were; arrival rate, service rate of patients, number of servers, salaries of the servers and associated waiting cost of patients. Arrival and service distribution of the patients were verified as per assumptions of the multi-server queuing model (M/M/c) by using input analyzer of Rockwell Arena software. Performance measures of the queuing system were calculated by using TORA optimization software. For cost calculation and graph plots MS excel was used. Reception and medical OPD at the case hospital 1 were more congested. One receptionist and doctor was suggested to be increased at both of the OPDs for the minimization of congestion of patients. In this way, they will have to wait for less time as the compared to the existing scenario; their waiting cost would certainly be decreased which will be the good point on the side of healthcare providers.

Keywords

 Queue, waiting cost, serving cost, servers.