A Comparative Study Of Outpatient Examination Queuing Strategies Based On Discrete Event Simulation

With growing awareness of public health and a significant increase in demand for medical care, the problems of queuing at clinic becomes more and more serious. As queuing strategies determine the order of examination items, appropriate queuing strategies play a crucial role in timely examinations. Smart medical changes the traditional medical treatment mode. It not only can perceive the real-time status information of departments and outpatients, but also support the real-time interaction between the hospital and outpatients. It solves the information asymmetry between the hospital and outpatients, and enriches the queuing strategies. Against the backdrop of the smart medical and under the premise of the limited medical resources, this study investigates the effects of queuing strategies on queuing time based on simulation.Firstly, this paper reviews the research of patients queuing in medical areas. Taking into account the distribution diversity of outpatient examination items, simulation is used to achieve the comparative study of queuing strategies. Then, to make the simulation model more realistic, the complex process of outpatients examination queuing is analyzed in detail. Meanwhile, the effects of situations on queuing time are taken into account, which include the round-trip delay of outpatients between the various departments, the limited system capacity of departments, "Queuing Examination", etc. With AnyLogic simulation software as the tool, a simulation model that the comparison of outpatient examination queuing strategies is constructed based on discrete event simulation modeling. Then, two types of queuing strategies are studied:first, three traditional queuing strategies based on the empirical judgment are summarized when outpatients decide the order of examination items for themselves; second, five new queuing recommendation strategies based on real-time awareness information are proposed when recommendations about the order of examination items are provided for outpatients. With different arrival rates of outpatients, the effects of each queuing strategy on three evaluations are examined, given outpatients fully accept the queuing recommendation strategy. Evaluations include average stay time, average queuing time and average service coefficient during the examination. Finally, individual differences when outpatients choose queuing strategies in reality are considered. With different arrival rates of outpatients, the effects of mixed queuing strategies on three evaluations are studied. And the mixed queuing strategies are composed of three traditional queuing strategies and two new queuing recommendation strategies, when outpatients own different acceptances of the queuing recommendation strategy. The simulation results show that the outpatient examination queuing time varies significantly across different queuing strategies, with limited medical resources.The queuing recommendation strategy considering the real-time statuses of departments and outpatients has the best effect. And the effect is better when the acceptance of the queuing recommendation strategy is higher.Theoretically, this paper enriches the outpatient examination queuing strategies, and provides new research perspectives and methods to solve the outpatients examination queuing. In practice, this paper extends the scope of smart medical's application. It provides a new method of reducing outpatients queuing time, and has a certain reference significance.