A queuing model for health care pharmacy using software Arena

Abstract

This paper focuses on improving and build a discrete event simulation model for modeling outpatient pharmacy workflow queuing system with the intent of exploring options for designing an efficient the queuing system of KKUH outpatient pharmacy Riyadh KSA. Simulation models of existing workflows in the pharmacy for KKUH outpatient pharmacy were created using discrete event simulation software (Arena). The data is collected for each server containing seven servers. Model inputs included prescription arrival times and processing times for each Server, Baseline of model is the predictions of prescription turnaround times, were then compared to those observed in reality. Various scenarios were tested and the results compared to those of the baseline models. The result found from the simulation model shows that a long waiting time exist in the system. The basic purpose of simulation model is to reduce the patients' waiting time and enhanced the quality of services.

Solving Problems of Interruptions and Multitasking in the Pharmacy of a Large Hospital Centre

“…This could be due to the fact that the pharmacy wants to maintain a constant stock level in accordance with the afore-mentioned business policy, so there is a need for frequent small deliveries. The delivery processing time of defined delivery groups corresponded to the lognormal distributions with different parameters, which is comparable to the results obtained in the paper [23], but different from the findings of the authors in the paper [21] where the patient service time (patient processing time) had been modelled by the exponential distribution.…”

“…Different approaches to pharmacy process improvement have been found in literature, including implementation of automation [16], simulations and mathematical optimization [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], and improvement methodologies [27][28][29]. James et al [16] investigated the influence of automation on reducing errors in dispensation of medication.…”

Review on Queueing Problem in Healthcare

“…The data were collected using stopwatch. Based on the analysis of the data which involved various scenarios, the result found from the simulation model shows that long waiting time exist in the system and simulation model basically helps to reduce the patients' waiting time and improve the service quality [8]. A suitable queueing theory and simulation technique has been developed in this study to optimize the management of studied outpatient pharmacy.…”

Simulating and Analysing Patients’ Waiting Time in Outpatient Department at Public Clinic in Johor Using Arena Software

“…According to the previous literature, the study showed that the researchers utilised a simulation model to demonstrate the waiting time in the system (Ali & Kassam, 2017;Aziati & Hamdan, 2018;Luo et al, 2016). According to Alhaag et al (2015), the primary goal of the simulation model is to minimise patient waiting times while simultaneously improving service quality.…”