Problem definition: We study the estimation of probability distribution individual patient waiting times in an emergency department (ED). Whereas it is known that waiting-time estimates can help improve patients’ overall satisfaction and prevent abandonment, existing methods focus on point forecasts, thereby completely ignoring underlying uncertainty. Communicating only a forecast to patients b...

BACKGROUND Waiting times for hospital appointments, treatment and/or surgery have become a major political and health service problem, leading to national maximum waiting times and policies to reduce waiting times. Quantitative studies have documented waiting times for various types of surgery and longer waiting times in public vs private hospitals. However, very little qualitative research has...

In December 2010, the Fraser Institute released its twentieth annual measurement of waiting times for medically necessary treatments in Canada (Barua et al., 2010). This most recent measurement shows that the national median waiting time from specialist appointment to treatment increased from 8.0 weeks in 2009 to 9.3 weeks in 2010. But the measurement of waiting times, or the examination of the...

BACKGROUND The introduction of large-scale out-of-hours GP cooperatives has led to questions about increased distances between the GP cooperatives and the homes of patients and the increasing waiting times for home visits in urgent cases. We studied the relationship between the patient's waiting time for a home visit and the distance to the GP cooperative. Further, we investigated if other fact...

Performance targets are commonly used in the public sector, despite their well known problems when organisations have multiple objectives and performance is difficult to measure. It is possible that such targets may work where there is considerable consensus that performance needs to be improved. We investigate this possibility by examining the response of the English National Health Service (N...

Long waiting times for inpatient treatment in the UK National Health Service have long been a source of great popular and political concern, and therefore a target for policy initiatives. One such is the London Patient Choice Project, under which patients at risk of breaching inpatient waiting time targets were offered the choice of an alternative hospital with a guaranteed shorter wait. This p...

Waiting times for hospital care are a significant issue in the UK National Health Service (NHS). The reforms of the health service in 1990 gave a subset of family doctors (GP fundholders) both the ability to choose the hospital where their patients were treated and the means to pay for some services. One of the key factors influencing family doctors' choice of hospital was patient waiting time....

In this paper the differences in average waiting times are utilized to identify the determinants of demand for health services. The equilibrium waiting time framework is used, but the full equilibrium assumption is relaxed by selecting areas with low waiting times and by estimating a (semi-)parametric selection model. Determinants of supply are used as instruments for the endogeneity of waiting...