Simulation Analysis for Reducing Queues in Mixed-patients’ Outpatient Department

Customers desire short waiting times whereas service providers want to maximize resources utilization. Long waiting time is not uncommon in many service organizations and it is familiar especially in outpatient departments. To make the study more realistic, some assumptions were removed and uses an animated simulation model for a mixed-patient type environment in an outpatient department. A special purpose data generator is designed to explore bottlenecks in consultation rooms. Four appointment scheduling rules and their possible combinations are evaluated in two steps. First, experimentation concentrates on appointed and non-appointed patients. Second, it considers new patients in addition to those two categories. It is revealed that the rule which records the lowest waiting time is not feasible due to the high portion of server idle time. The rule that shows the lowest server idle time is not viable due to increased waiting time. It is possible to find the best rule which lies between these two times in a mixed-patient type environment. (Received in May 2005, accepted in February 2006. This paper was with the author 3 months for 2 revisions.)