Discrete Event Simulation to Reduce Patient Waiting Time in Outdoor Department of a Tertiary Care Thyroid Hospital

Queuing leading to significant waiting times is common for patients in a healthcare delivery system. Although, there are many alternatives to choose amongst many options to reduce queuing including prioritization, increase in capacity, rationing, public private partnerships, patient and physician education etc. the present study was conducted in Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences, a tertiary care thyroid treatment facility, with objective to identify significant queing during patient flow. The queuing model was MM1. Simulation of patient data was done using Crystal ball ® software. Performance parameters were calculated on the simulated data with the option of employing 1 or 2 primary care physicians as screening physicians before the patient is actually seen by the specialist. It was concluded that employing 2 physicians improved all the queuing parameters except that the utilization of the physicans was reduced significantly. The decision to employ more physicians should be weighed between social benefit of reduction of patient waiting time and cost of employing