Optimization Of Doctors Lean Staffing In Outpatient Department Based On Queuing Theory

As one of the major livelihood issues of our country, the government attaches greatimportance to the development of medical and health care. However, the low operationalefficiency is one big problem in the field of the medical and health care field, which can bedemonstrated, for example, by the serious patient queuing phenomenon in hospitals. For thedoctor outpatient departments, the regulations of patient arrival are various in different timeperiods of a day, so are the queuing phenomena. Therefore, it is very important to staffdoctors in outpatient departments according to the different regulations of patient arrival indifferent time periods of a day, in order to improve the resources utilization rate, reduceoperating costs, and improve the quality of hospital services and patient satisfaction.Taking the doctor outpatient department as a research object, this dissertation aims todesign a lean doctors staffing strategy in different time periods based Queuing Theory,which minimizes the total costs and satisfies the constrains of waiting tolerance.This dissertation first selects one outpatient department to do the empirical study. Onthe one hand, by means of field observation, it collected the time data of patient arrival anddoctor service in the selected outpatient department, and then tested the patient arrival ruleand the doctors’ average service time rule by chi-squared test. On the other hand, throughthe field interview method, it obtained the waiting time tolerance of patients. Then, basedon Queuing Theory, this dissertation constructed the outpatient department doctor leanstaffing model. This model allowed for the satisfaction of patients and made the waitingtime tolerance of patients as the constraint. The optimization goal of the model was tominimize the total costs of patients waiting and doctors service. In the end, this paper usedthe Monte-carlo simulation method based on Matlab software platform to do the simulationexperiment and finally came out the lean staffing solution.Based on the field survey, data analysis and test, this dissertation verifies that theregulations of patient arrival are different within a day. For example, the periods of8:00-8:59，9:00-9:59and13:30-14:29are usually the peak hours. According to suchdifference, this dissertation proposes the lean doctor staffing model, and through simulationobtains the lean doctors staffing solution in a day which allows for the satisfaction ofpatient waiting tolerance and minimizes the total costs.At last, this dissertation puts forward three suggestions. Firstly, hospitals can improvepatients’ waiting tolerance by optimizing the waiting environment. Secondly, hospitals canopen up telephone appointment and online appointment in order to guide the patients flow. In the end, hospitals can construct a flexible doctors scheduling system according to theideal solution of the model.The innovation points of this dissertation include the following aspects. Firstly, thisdissertation proposes the concept of patient waiting tolerance and makes it as the constraintof the constructed model. Secondly, this dissertation studies the exquisite doctors staffing ofa day according to the different patient arrival rates, which is innovative from theperspective.However, there still exist some deficiencies and limitations in this paper. For example,the medical process is rather complicated, due to the particularity of hospital service, andpatients would return to the doctor outpatient department queuing system. To simplify theproblem, this paper focuses on the patients who arrive at the doctor outpatient departmentafter registration. In later work, the characteristics of the process and more factors will betaken account of.