Reducing outpatient waiting times for hospital using queueing theory

An event-driven network approach using queueing theory to reduce the waiting times of outpatients for hospital is presented in this paper. First, an object including all queueing for medical examinations and treatment departments at the hospital is built using an event-driven network model. Next, a queueing model in which the arrival distribution and service distribution are conformed as a M/G/s queue for the general reception. For the second factor, the walking speed of outpatients is given; the travel time of outpatients is decided in direct relation to two medical examinations and the distance between the respective treatment departments. The dispatching rules assigned to each outpatient are suggested based on their expected visitation time and the expected service time necessary for each outpatient. Next, situations are assessed relative to the windows of medical examinations and treatment departments, and when outpatients have single check-ups or plural check-ups. When they are plural, the windows of medical examinations and treatment departments are either crowded or vacant. Then outpatients are scheduled using suggested dispatching rules. Subsequently, the effects of the proposed approach for dispatching rules of the total waiting time for each outpatient are verified using numerical experiments.