Capacity Calculations

Diwakar Gupta ()
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Diwakar Gupta: The University of Texas at Austin

Chapter Chapter 4 in Healthcare Analytics, 2026, pp 21-30 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract A fundamental question that healthcare managers face is how to determine the maximum capacity of a healthcare clinic or a hospital service based on a particular provision of resources and patient flow. Different types of patients may require different amounts of time from different resources. This chapter introduces the concepts of a patient flow diagram, bottleneck resource, theoretical maximum capacity, utilization, and throughput rate. Through a thought experiment, it explains the impact of variability on patient waiting times and introduces appointment systems as a mechanism that allows clinics to mediate patients’ direct and indirect waiting times. Finally, it introduces students to the fundamental relationship between average backlog and average waiting time, which is also known as the Little’s law.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-24835-0_4

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