Physician-Customized Strategies for Reducing Outpatient Waiting Time in South Korea Using Queueing Theory and Probabilistic Metamodels

Abstract

The time a patient spends waiting to be seen by a healthcare professional is an important determinant of patient satisfaction in outpatient care. Hence, it is crucial to identify parameters that affect the waiting time and optimize it accordingly. First, statistical analysis was used to validate the effective parameters. However, no parameters were found to have significant effects with respect to the entire outpatient department or to each department. Therefore, we studied the improvement of patient waiting times by analyzing and optimizing effective parameters for each physician. Queueing theory was used to calculate the probability that patients would wait for more than 30 min for a consultation session. Using this result, we built metamodels for each physician, formulated an effective method to optimize the problem, and found a solution to minimize waiting time using a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). On average, we obtained a 30% decrease in the probability that patients would wait for a long period. This study shows the importance of customized improvement strategies for each physician.

On the Optimal Input Rate in Queues with Batch Service

“…and the existence of the equivalent birth-death process depends upon the existence of a solution to the previous equation, henceforth referred to as the characteristic equation of the system, satisfying stability condition (1). Although (3) provides an implicit relation between the asymptotic service rate M and all the queuing characteristics (λ, µ and b), i.e.,…”

“…Queues and queuing networks are often used as powerful mathematical models of many real systems, in which a given service is shared by multiple customers. Starting from the pioneering works by Erlang [1], queuing theory has emerged as a powerful analysis tool in a wide range of cargo and passenger transport systems (including river ports, seaports, airports, and multimodal transport hubs) [2], in healthcare [3], in IoT-Fog-Cloud cooperation systems [4], and, in general, in telecommunication systems with Quality of Service guarantees [5], just to mention a few recent works.…”

Outcome evaluation of effect of organizational strategies on reduction of patient waiting time at the outpatient department at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre – Northern, Tanzania

“…However the United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) has established their gold standard patient waiting time at the OPD which suggests that medical care should be provided to at least 90% of patients no later than 30 minutes after their scheduled appointment time [18,19]. The Patient's Charter of UK, has recommended the same standard as the IOM (Diri, and Eledo, 2020; Lee et al, 2022). The absence of a gold standard waiting time carries several significant implications.…”

Effect of waiting time on patient satisfaction in outpatient: An empirical investigation

“…[1] To improve patient satisfaction, many efforts have focused on reducing the actual waiting time (AWT). [2][3][4] The methods for AWT reduction include appointment, [5,6] scheduling, [7] and the use of artificial intelligence to arrange images in advance. [8,9] These measures have reduced the AWT of outpatients, [10] but patients are still dissatisfied with the waiting time.…”