The Reduction of Patient's Waiting Time at an Outpatient Department using Simulation Modeling : A Community Hospital in Suphanburi Province

Abstract

An outpatient department of a community hospital in Suphanburi Province is having a large number of patients per day and leading to a long waiting time accounted for 77.92% of total time. Objective: To reduce waiting time of patients at the outpatient department. Methods: Data were collected and divided into 2 types: appointed patients and general patients. Waiting time, service time and resources used in each process are collected. A Simulation model of the current situation was developed with the Arena version 14.0 program.  Three improvement methods consist of : 1) allocation of appointed patients arrival time 2) adjusting staff working schedules 3) a combination of the first and second methods. Results: The results from the current situation, medical patients with having before lab test have the highest average waiting time at 144.49±4.35 minutes and accounted for 72.26% of its total time, medical patients with having lab test have the highest average waiting time at 187.20±7.31 minutes or 78.38% of its total time and the average waiting time of non-appointed general patients with a lab test is 282.49±5.37minutes or 82.09%of its total time. Conclusions: The best improvement method is the third alternative that are to allocate the arrival of appointed patients by equally spreading the number of appointed patients from 7:00 a.m. to 12: 00 p.m. and adjusting staff working schedules such as vital sign checks, doctors, cashiers, and pharmacists. The results show that it can reduce the average waiting time of appointed medical patients with having a lab test before meeting doctors from 144.49±4.35 to 90.66±3.03 minutes, appointed medical patients with having a lab test after meeting doctors from 187.20±7.31 to 98.85±3.11 minutes and non-appointed general patients with having a lab test after meeting doctors can be decreased from 282.49±5.37 to 194.66±4.54 minutes.