Application Of Theory Of Constraints To Processes Optimization Of The Out-patient System

With the development of economy and the increasing of level of our citizens, people in growing numbers are starting to realize that health is important; and that result in the rapid expansion of medical service market in China. According to the literature statistics, majority of public hospitals in our country have lots of problems including less efficient, unreasonable distribution of resources and serious waste problem when compared to the hospitals in the world. Recently, because of the developing of medical system reform, private economy and foreign investment have the opportunity to inject in this huge market of medical services; it will be put much pressure on our original public hospitals. It then stands to reason that hospital managers must face how to rationally plan and utilize limited resources, obtain maximum benefits and save more patients with fewer resources within shortest time. In such macro environment of reform, it is necessary to research how to take appropriate measures to enhance competitiveness in order to better adapt the changing environment and market competition.Based on the above analysis, this thesis, taking capacity of hospital service as its subject, is conducted to apply the Theory of Constraints along with queuing theory and BPR, and finally put forward a suggestion that can improve the ability of hospital service. Firstly, it sorts out complex outpatient procedures, finds out the logical relationship between processes, and it analyzes the core problems in the health service system with Thinking Process logic diagram of TOC. Secondly, utilizing the queuing theory to analyze real-time data—the time of patient arrival, be serviced and gone—and make a quantitative evaluation of the outpatient system. And on the basis of this evaluation, the thesis can tell the quality of distribution of resources, and be the scientific basis of optimization of services. At the same time, it can find out the bottleneck by the quantitative means. Next, the thesis reconstructs and optimizes outpatient service process to reduce unnecessary patient waiting time. At last, it has a case study on the whole suggestion, and validates its validity of improving the performance in a public hospital in Wuhan with simulation model.