Designing Quota Size and Patient Arrival Time in Multiple Block Systems with Limited Medical Resource
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Tsai, Jui-Fen
Abstract
In this study, we focus on how to design patient quota to each fixed slots. Given the
total opening quota in each time blocks, we divide the opening service hours into
smaller time slots, and determine patient quotas for these time slots so that the
probability of a patient’s waiting time over a tolerant time is minimized. We consider
two types of patients with different service time in our problem. We estimate the
expected waiting time of each slots and the expected over time at the end of the block.
We assume that the patients will arrive the medical facility at the beginning of their
appointed time slots and they will be served in a random order. The service time of a
type of patients follows an exponential distribution. Under this model, a closed form
solution is unlikely to be obtained. Therefore, we propose an Approximation Method to
deal with this problem by assuming the two types of patients can be served
simultaneously. A dynamic programming model is constructed to find optimal quotas
for each time slot. A simulation model is used to verify the quality of solutions obtained
by the approximation method. In addition, we apply our proposed method to a real case
and discuss how the time length of time slots affects expected waiting time, probability
of waiting time over a tolerant time, and the expected overtime of a time block.
Subjects
Healthcare Service
Outpatient Appointment
Quota Assignment
Dynamic Programming
Type
thesis
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