Application of Queue Theory to Waiting Line Problems In Emergency Department of The Lagos State General Hospital, Odan, Lagos Island, Lagos (original) (raw)
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Queues are characterized structures fashioned to maintain order and create a hold on time, money and human contribution towards development and efficient performance of any system. Queues are experienced in our everyday activities. Queue causes inconvenience to individuals (patients) and economic costs to firms and organizations. Patients wait for minutes, hours, days or months to receive medical service-waiting before, during or after being served. Queuing theory is a mathematical approach to the study of waiting in lines/queues. This research presents the results of a study that evaluates the effectiveness of a queuing model in identifying the major bottleneck in healthcare operations. It uses chi-square and Erlang's queuing to analyse data collected from the University of Benin Health Center and the Faith Mediplex center over one month period. Results showed that queue characteristics existing at the healthcare centers during the situation analysis was a single server multiple queue model. However, after the study was done involving staff at the understudy healthcare centers, it was discovered that queuing is mainly found in record unit and doctor consultation waiting lobby. We finally came to a conclusion and made the some recommendations on how best healthcare centers can maximize the benefits of queuing model for good and effective operations.
International journal of scientific and management research, 2022
In many hospitals, time spent by the patients to get service in the healthcare facility is always the main problem faced by the health care providers. This trend is on the increase and it is a potential threat to healthcare services. In Nigeria, general hospitals with large number of patients have cases where patients may not be attended to on time. The consequences of keeping patients in a queue for too long in order to get medical care can cause a slew of problems or even lead to death. In this study, the multiple servers queuing models were used to analyze service efficiency of the Ahamadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria, Kaduna State. Primary data was collected through observation and questionnaire methods at the hospital over a two-week period to determine the queuing model that minimizes patients waiting time. The results showed that a significant percentage of the patients were not satisfied with how queues management strategies put in place by the hospital. Regression analysis shows that all the dimensions of service quality have significant positive relationship with the patient's satisfaction.
Application of queuing theory to patient satisfaction at a tertiary hospital in Nigeria
Nigerian Medical Journal, 2013
settings. Most of healthcare systems have excess capacity to accommodate random variations, so queuing analysis can be used as short term measures, or for facilities and resource planning. Other use of queuing analysis and simulation in healthcare includes the following: Walk-in patient clinic, emergency room arrivals, phone calls from physician office to health management organization, outpatient clinics and outpatient surgeries, physician offices, pharmacy, inventory control. Healthcare resource and infrastructure planning for disaster management and public health. 5-7 The need for application of queuing theory in healthcare settings is very important because the well being and life of someone is concerned. The time spent by a patient while waiting to be attended to by a doctor is critical to the patient and to the image of the hospital before the public. 8-10 Various attempts by the Federal Government of Nigeria to improve on health care services will not yield good results
Global Journal of Health Science, 2016
Background: Patients, who seek care in emergency department, are waiting in queue and the health care provision in the department seems to be too overcrowded; the extended waiting time increases dissatisfaction and delays admission of new patients. In most of the hospitals considered to be overcrowded, the discharge rate of patients is managed by the use of "theory of queues". This study was done to observe waiting time of patients in emergency department by "queue theory analysis" and computer simulator in an Iranian hospital. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in which simulation software (Arena, version 14) was used to build the 8 models. They run in a period of one month. The input information for the models was extracted from the hospital database and through sampling. The objective of this study was to evaluate the response variables of "waiting time" and "number waiting" of each level. Result: In Level 2A, with increased number of beds with 20 beds, the waiting time decreased to 0.45 minutes and the percentage of deaths declined to 26.2%, but the number of discharge from this level declined, too. In level 3 with increased number of beds 2 times, waiting time decreased to 74 minutes and the percentage of death declined to 3.7% but the number of discharge from this level to ICU declined, too. Conclusion: This study showed the magnitude of ED overcrowding in Nemazee hospital. Increasing the bed capacity in the ED could reduce the waiting time in each part of ED.
Role of Waiting Line Model in Reducing the Patient’s Waiting Time In The Emergency Department
Journal of Medical Science And clinical Research, 2015
Timely health aid affects the prospects of patient life. In critical cases waiting for the patient will definitely ruin the opportunity of the life. Many previous studies elaborate occurrences of the patient's waiting time in the Emergency Department all over the world which directly affects the patient satisfaction level and finally reducing the performance of the hospital. Total five types of patient waiting time are observed by the researcher. These patient's waiting times stop the patient flow at various steps. To optimize the performance of the emergency department in terms of time and other variables, there are various management techniques, such as LEAN, Six Sigma, Simulation modeling, Waiting line model, Application of Rapid Assessment team, Continuous Quality Improvement techniques. We designed randomized observational cross sectional time study in the emergency department of a multi spatiality hospital located in central India over a period of 6 months. Results: From time study, waiting times are observed which are of five types such as waiting for Ward boy, Casualty Medical Officer, Intensivist,diagnostic procedure and for Bed in ICCU or ICU or Ward. Waiting time for Intensivist and for bed in ICCU / ICU / Ward are of having high value for the patients of priority level I, II and III. For patients of priority level-I and II, time is very important.
An Analyses on Patients’ Queuing System at Muhammad Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital, Kano
FUDMA JOURNAL OF SCIENCES
A major cause for concern in hospitals is congestion, which brings about untoward hardship to patients due to long queues and delay in service delivery. This paper seeks to minimize the waiting time of patients by comparing the performance indicators of a single server and multi-server model at the Paediatrics Department of Muhammad Abdullahi Wase Specialist Hospital Kano (MAWSHK). In order to achieve this, primary data was obtained through direct observation which in turn is subjected to the test of goodness of fit to ascertain the distribution that best describes the data. The performance indicators comprising utilization factor, average number of patients in the queue, average number of patients in the system, average waiting time in queue and average waiting time in system for a single server and multi-server model were computed and analyzed respectively. Our findings indicate that the G/G/4 model performs better compared to the G/G/1 model as it minimizes the waiting time of pa...
Journal of Advances in Mathematics and Computer Science
The queuing theory is the mathematical approach to the analysis of waiting lines in any setting where arrivals rate of the subject is faster than the system can handle. It is applicable to the health care setting where the systems have excess capacity to accommodate random variation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the waiting, arrival and service times of patients at AAUA Health- setting and to model a suitable queuing system by using simulation technique to validate the model. This study was conducted at AAUA Health- Centre Akungba Akoko. It employed analytical and simulation methods to develop a suitable model. The collection of waiting time for this study was based on the arrival rate and service rate of patients at the Outpatient Centre. The data was calculated and analyzed using Microsoft Excel. Based on the analyzed data, the queuing system of the patient current situation was modelled and simulated using the PYTHON software. The result obtained from the...
USE OF QUEUING MODELS IN HEALTH-CARE FACILITIES -CASE STUDY OF KISII GENERAL LEVEL FIVE
This work is dedicated to our dear parents for their financial support and encouragement throughout our study. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We give our utmost thanks to our almighty God for He has provided us with the means to this end. We would like to sincerely thank Mr. Tamaro Abuya our supervisor for his relentless assistance in perusing through our work and suggesting some of the very critical changes which have seen us get through with the study. We are grateful to our colleagues and for their positive criticism of our work. We believe their criticisms have added some value in this work. Last but not least, we acknowledge with thanks the role-played by our respondents in making this study a reality, and anybody else who directly or indirectly supported during our research study period.
Applications of queues in hospitals in Istanbul
Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS) ISSN (E): 2305-9249 ISSN (P): 2305-9494, 2015
Queues are one of the worst problem in hospitals in almost all World. Patients have to wait long time even to get a small operation in hospitals in Turkey. Turkey healthcare system has recently improved, but it is still not at expected level. The quantity oriented healthcare services meaning caring more patients are not good at meeting quality parameters of healthcare services. The private sector partly subsidized by governments is more profit oriented and its share has been increasing. The quality of care can be increased by low waiting and better performance of doctors. In this study, the queuing theory applications are applied two big hospitals in Istanbul during 2013-2014 years by measuring waiting time and services time and systems during different times in six months. It is found that the performance of doctors are not at expected level when total utilization is considered. Waiting long time in queues is ignored by hospitals and these long queues create high stress over patients especially at public hospitals. Patient categorization based on appointments such as scheduled patients, checking patients, urgent patients, priority patients and new patients of day, serving different patients at district time of day, combining system of all hospitals in the same city for scheduling of surgery and other operations, decreasing waiting queues and workload on doctors can help to improve the current healthcare system.