Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
DOI: 10.5923/j.hrmr.20130301.06
School of Business and M anagement (SBM ), Institute Technology Bandung (ITB), Bandung, 40132, Indonesia
Abstract Outpatient services have become an important component of health care. By hidebound thinking, the medical
profession emphasized that a physicians time is more valuable than a patients time. Consequently, the appointment
system was designed to min imize physicians idle time overlooking patients waiting t ime. Th is is no longer valid in
todays consumer oriented society. Long wait ing times for t reat ment in the outpatient department followed by short
consultations has long been a complaint. Nowadays, customers use waiting time as a decisive factor in choosing a service
provider. Therefo re, idle time of both parties must be considered in designing an appointment system although these two
objectives are contradicted to each other. This research aims to provide a study of the major causes of patients length of
time for medical t reat ment in a outpatient clinic at one of Indonesian public hospital and also provide recommendation on
the best strategy to improve the appointment system so that can maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of resource and
capacity. The hospital queue model use single-channel mu ltiphase systems. Queuing theory be the first tool to look at
patient wait ing times on each server independently. The results show that the hospital should change the appointment
system for physicians. Applying doctor on call system may appear to reduce doctors idle time but lead to high patients
wait ing times. In some cases, the appointment system make doctor to be back and forth to the hospital, so it was not
directly affect the productivity of a doctor. Not only construct the appointment system, they should take attention of patient
flow and set scheduling of the capacity to increase the effective and efficiency outpatient department performance.
Keywords Appointment System, Outpatient Waiting Time, Queue Theory
others are private hospital. Although the number hospitals Healthcare management has evolved into a dynamic and
are large but there are still many people go for treatment to complex field. This d iverse industry is always changing due
overseas, especially the upper classes. National hospital to scientific discoveries that bring significant contributions
industry must consider what makes some people prefer to to improve the health standards of our co mmunities. The
seek treatment to overseas. changes have moved on to determine new ways about how
There is a need for mo re realistic representation of and where healthcare is provided.
outpatient clinics. Effective appoint ment systems have the Li et al.[3] found that the obvious differences in prev ious
goal of matching demand with capacity so that resources are hospital research and current hospital practice in managing
better utilized and patient wait ing times are min imized. demand is that previous research tends to focus on a reactive
Patient waiting times and waiting-room congestion are two approach to manage demand through internal imp rovement
of the few tangible quality elements. Well-designed of facility utilization and better scheduling policies.
appointment systems have the potential to increase the Integrated Healthcare Management is the systematic
utilizat ion of expensive personnel and equipment-based application of processes and shared information to optimize
med ical resources as well as reducing waiting t imes for the coordination of benefits and care for the healthcare
patients[2]. Hospital managers should therefore take steps to consumer. Integration of healthcare management not only
improve quality in these three aspects; appointment system, observes the relationship between customer (patients) and
patient flo w and capacity. The fact, many patients public hospitals but also the inter-relationship between departments
hospital prefer to move to private hospital to do medical in the healthcare systems. This integrated management will
check up and treatment. Its means are the hospital support the effectiveness and efficiency of hospital. Hospital
management should be improved to increasing patient strategic planning can be performed at the corporate level by
satisfaction. examining the hospital "system" which would include
This study allows the hospital to notice what impact has hospitals, HMOs, walk-in clin ics, and other health-oriented
the improvement do in the hospital performance. Moreover, businesses[4].
this study will show what factors can be improved in the
reducing patient waiting time. This research expected to
bring new ideas and concept to be imp lemented in hospital in 3. Outpatient Management
Indonesia, especially public hospital since the numbers of
Outpatient services are gradually becoming an essential
researches about this field are limited. Research question for
component in healthcare. The develop ment of the t imes,
this paper are:
technology and the rapid increase in population make the
How does the model of outpatient service and arrival
theories need to be developed. The objective of outpatient
pattern of patient in public hospital?
scheduling is to and an appointment system fo r wh ich a
Is an existing outpatient service already fu lfilling the
particular measure of performance is optimized in a clinical
minimu m service standard of hospital?
environmentan application of resource scheduling under
What factors causing high outpatient waiting times?
uncertainty. As seen as Figure 1, Cayirli and Veral[2]
The objective of this paper is to investigate how does the
discussion about modelling of clinic environ ment.
model of outpatient waiting time and patient scheduling on
The underlying problem applies to a wide variety of
Indonesias public hospital and find out the factors that
environments, such as general practice patient scheduling,
causing the stack.
scheduling patients for hemodialysis, rad iology scheduling,
surgical scheduling, etc.
2. Service Operation in Healthcare
Industry 4. Queuing Theory
Healthcare service is a patient-oriented service that Queuing is an event where people or goods will undergo a
requires continuous interaction with customers. It utilizes process from the arrival queue; enter the queue, waiting,
facilit ies and equipment, and consumes a large volu me of until the last service. Limits the length of the queue can be
nursing care. Therefore, it beco mes increasingly important to limited (limited) can also (unlimited), depending on the
healthcare executives to understand what kind o f facility, number of existing units in the system. Waiting line or
equipment, and workforce decisions are critical to achieve queuing system is an items or people in a line awaiting
the commonly acknowledged goal of providing quality service. The parts of a wait ing line are: (a) Arrivals or inputs
health service at a reasonable cost[3] to the system: these have characteristic such as population
Until now research on operations strategy in Indonesian size, behaviour, and statistical distribution. (b) Queuing
public hospitals has not been well developed, especially discipline or wait ing line itself: Characteristic of the queue
when it relates operations strategy to the current health include whether it is limited or unlimited in length and the
service condition. Most of the operations-oriented studies discipline of people or items in it, for example FIFO. (c) The
focus narrowly on issues of hospital cost containment, service facility: its characteristic includes its design and the
capacity planning, or personnel scheduling[3]. statistical distribution of service time. There are four type of
Human Resource M anagement Research 2013, 3(1): 27-33 29
queuing model, which are single channel single phase Dynamic. The schedu le o f futu re arrivals are rev ised
system, single channel mult iphase system; mult iple channel cont inuous ly over th e cou rse o f th e day b ased on the
single phase system and multip le channel mult iple phase curren t state o f the system. Th is is app licab le when
systems[5]. pat ient arrivals to th e serv ice area can b e reg u lated
dynamically , wh ich gen erally invo lves pat ients already
ad mitt ed to a hospital o r clin ic.
5. Factor That Influenced Outpatient The most p rimit ive fo rm o f out pat ien t management is
Management sing le b lock schedu ling . Th e s ing le b lock ru le assigns all
pat ients to arrive at the same t ime. The p at ients are
Appointment System
served on a first co me first serve bas is. Ano ther,
The term o f appo int ment refer t o the period o f t ime
nowadays mo re co mmon , fo rm o f appo int ment
allocat ed in th e sch edu le to a part icu lar p at ient s v isit
schedu ling is th e ind iv idual b lock ru le. Pat ien ts are
and serv ice t ime refer to the amount o f t ime the
assigned un ique appo int ment t imes that are spaced
physician actually spends with the p at ient (wh ich may be
throughou t th e clin ical session .
shorter or lon ger than the app o int ment du rat ion ).[6]
Manager shou ld consid er th e facto r th at influenced on
Based on Cay irli and Veral[2], Appo int ment
design appo int ment system. Fig ure 2 describ e facto rs
schedu ling can be classified in to t wo b ro ad categories :
that influenced o n d esign appo int ment system.
Static. A ll decis ions must be made p rio r to the
beg inn ing of a clin ic sess ion, wh ich is th e most co mmon
appo int ment system in healthcare
Outpatient Clin ic. This clinic has eleven specialists. They are: The condition is compounded because the hospital has not
internal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, general yet allocate doctor schedule by room and type of disease.
surgery, orthopaedic, neurosurgery, dermatology and When the condition is all the doctor came at the same time,
venereology, neurology, medical rehabilitat ion, pediatric, there is no empty room or all of the tools being used, so that
psychiatry and ophthalmology. both physician and patients have to wait even longer. At
Observations made during a month. After the observation, other times, the roo m become id le. The wait ing time
it was decided for data ret rieval done on Monday and becomes higher because hospital did not allocate and
Tuesday, which is on the busy days of the week. The data well-scheduled their resources. The clinic has an effective
used are the number of patient arrivals per specialist per day, operating time for six hours, but many patients accumulated
arrival time of doctor and patient, length of registration at one time.
service and the duration of examination. Therefore this study would like to imp lement individual
Fro m one month of the observation, it was found the block schedule. By implementing an appointment system,
average number of patient per hour. Fro m the Table 1, it the clinic is able to optimize the resources and capacity.
shows the high arrival rate on Monday and Tuesday. Internal Patients were also more likely to be served and patient
med icine always takes a large number of patients. satisfaction will increase. It does not mean to expect mo re
people to be sick. The existing conditions, the number of
Table 1. The average number of patients per day
patient are large co mpare to the hospital capacity.
Specialist Mo Tu Wed Thr Fr Consequently many patients run to private hospitals and
Internal Medicine 49 51 35 35 29 even abroad for better treatment.
Obstetrics and gynecology 19 17 20 17 15
General Surgery 46 30 30 31 20 7.2. Appoi ntment System
Orthopedic 11 9 7 8 4 Existing appointment system which applied in this clinic
Neurosurgery 7 4 1 3 2 is the single block ru le. It assigns all patients to arrive at the
Neurology 15 8 13 10 5 same time. The patients are served on a first come first serve
Dermatology and 12 7 11 9 7 basis. The queue system is single channel mu ltiple phase
Medical Rehabilitation 1 0 2 1 0 with two single server. The current queue model is M/M/1/I,
Pediatric 0 0 0 0 0 which means the pattern is random arrival. The service
Psychiatry 2 3 1 2 2 pattern is also random that follows Poisson distribution. The
Ophthalmology 1 0 1 0 0 number o f facilities is only one with infinite population. It
has waiting line in each server. The queue model will be
Table 2 shows the time of patient arrivals. A large number shows as the figure belo w.
of patients come between 08.00 am to 11.am. Th is condition
thought to lead to a long patient waiting times. So, this arrivals registration
examining exit
waiting line waiting line room
research will focus on the busy hours. The patient arrival rate
on busy hours is 30 people per hour. Queuing system 1 Queuing system 2
Figure 5. Queuing Model for Specialist Outpatient Clinic
Table 2. The average number of patients arrival per hours
The detail of queue model can be seen fro m the following
num of patient/ day
Time patient flow d iagram.
1 (Mo) 2 (Tu) 3 (Mo) 4 (Tu) Fro m the Figure 6, there are t wo type of patient on
< 07:59 3 0 5 5 specialist outpatient clinic, one type is patient that already a
8:00 : 8:59 34 26 30 28 member, and the other is patients that come for the first time.
9:00 : 9:59 38 25 47 27
The new member need to pre-register on informat ion desk by
10:00 : 10:59 34 28 23 22
filled the registration form. There is no queue on information
11:00 : 11:59 14 16 19 17
desk, so this server was not considered on this research. After
12:00 : 12:59 11 11 7 6
13:00 : 13:59 5 5 3 4
registration, the patient is waiting for the treatment (next
> 14: 00 2 3 1 2 server). On the other hand, med ical record staff will look for
the patient record file. Time taken to search medical records
This Clinic has over 30 sub-specialists. The number of is relat ively shorter than patients waiting for the doctor. The
existing space is 10 rooms and 174 doctors. The h ighest level patients will not go ho me. They still have another choice. It
of patient arrival is at the beginning of each week. The clin ic can be one, two or all three alternative; supporting treatment,
implements the single block system. The patient was not cashier, or pharmacy.
scheduled to come before. The physician appointment
system is on call. The doctor comes when patients arrive. 7.3. Outpatient Waiting Time
The problem of this system is the first patient will have a The ambulatory facilities are designed to make more
longer wait ing time. Moreover utility of the room and the effective use of patients' and doctors' time. The queuing
equipment is also a critical issue. formula for model single channel system that used was:
32 Fatma Poni M ardiah et al.: The Analysis of Appointment System to Reduce Outpatient
Waiting Time at Indonesias Public Hospital
=
1 33minutes. General Surgery has 14 minutes and obstetrics &
This is the definition of a few terms: gynecology has 9minutes.
= 2
= Arrival rate Fro m t wo tables above, it can be predict the patient
= Service rate
=
2
3 P = Average server utilization wait ing time ranged between 27-51minutes. Based on the
( )
Lq = Average number of customers in the queue minimu m standards of hospital care, outpatient wait ing times
=
1
4 Ls = Average number of customers in the system should be less than 30 minutes. This time is calcu lated fro m
Wq = Average waiting time in the queue the first patient enrolled until physician served. Since the
= 5 W s = Average time in the system
( ) calculation of the patient's waiting time separately (not
considering doctor arrival t ime), the wait ing time o f patients
Based on calculation for first server using one month daily still within reasonable limits. In fact, there are even patients
data, the table below was the result. The average time need who have to wait mo re than three hours. The main causes of
on waiting fo r the patient is 0.3hours, or 18minutes. long wait ing times patients are physicians who are not
Table 4 show the condition on three specialists; internal available any time.
med icine general surgery and obstetrics & gynecology. This
calculation didnt consider the capacity of the room. Internal
med icine has a higher wait ing time. It is about 0.54hours or
supporting
treatment
pharmacy
Registration
Arrival rate () 27
Service rate () 30
Average server utilization(P) 0.90 %
Average number of customers in the queue(Lq) 8.10 people
Average number of customers in the system(Ls) 9 peoples
Average waiting time in the queue(Wq) 0.30 hours
Average time in the system(Ws) 0.33 hours
Probability (% of time) system is empty (P0) 0.10 %
Obstetrics &
Internal Medicine General Surgery
gynecology
Arrival rate () 6.5 5.2 2.8
Service rate () 8 8 6
(P) 0.81 0.65 0.47 %
(Lq ) 3.52 1.18 0.42 people
(Ls) 4.33 1.82 0.89 peoples
(Wq ) 0.54 0.23 0.15 hours
(Ws) 0.67 0.35 0.32 hours
(P 0) 0.19 0.35 0.53 %
Human Resource M anagement Research 2013, 3(1): 27-33 33