Queuing Theory-A Tool For Optimizing Hospital Services

Abstract

 Allocation of scarce resources presents an increasing challenge to hospital administrators and health policy makers. In health care situations, we
typically want to minimize cost or maximize quality or, more likely, some combination of these two. Application of queuing theory in hospital, attempts to improve the delivery of patient care services in the outpatient department as well as other departments. Calculation of Traffic intensity with a mean waiting time & Service timings helps to understand the congestion and overcrowding in the system or to identify the service facilities which are idle, thus leading to optimization of resources.
This study analyzes the queuing characteristics in tertiary and secondary care government hospitals in twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. A sample
of 200 patients were randomly selected and observed to understand their arrival and service patterns. Surprisingly both the hospitals had very less utilization
rate (26.58% in tertiary care & 28.16% in secondary care) and very high idle rate (73% in tertiary care & 71% in secondary care). The results clearly show that
the utilization rate is very small which needs attention by the policy makers to improve the efficiency of the system in both the government hospitals.