Business Administration, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Feb 1;20(3):2635. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20032635.
Healthcare institutions generally use an appointment system. However, patients often need to receive medical services unexpectedly. If they visit a clinic without an appointment, they may have to wait for a long time, as their priority is low. In this study, we investigated whether the clinic registration system can be improved by separating the queues and resources for different types of patients. From our simulation results, we found that under a certain setup, the separation policy does not effectively reduce the walk-ins' waiting time, nor improve the service. The study gives valuable managerial insights into the factors affecting patients' waiting times. As the number of random walk-ins is relatively higher, the service times are longer, and the no-show rate of appointments is lower, separation may reduce the waiting time of walk-in patients.
医疗机构通常采用预约制。然而，患者有时会意外需要接受医疗服务。如果他们没有预约就去诊所，他们可能需要等待很长时间，因为他们的优先级较低。在这项研究中，我们调查了通过分离不同类型患者的队列和资源是否可以改进诊所登记系统。从我们的模拟结果中，我们发现，在某种设置下，分离策略并不能有效地减少非预约患者的等待时间，也不能改善服务。该研究为影响患者等待时间的因素提供了有价值的管理见解。由于随机非预约患者的数量相对较高，服务时间较长，预约的未到诊率较低，因此分离可能会减少非预约患者的等待时间。
