Physician-Customized Strategies for Reducing Outpatient Waiting Time in South Korea Using Queueing Theory and Probabilistic Metamodels

Hanbit Lee, Eun Kyoung Choi, Kyung A. Min, Eunjeong Bae, Hooyun Lee and Jongsoo Lee
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Hanbit Lee: School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea
Eun Kyoung Choi: College of Nursing and Mo-Im Kim Nursing Research Institute, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea
Kyung A. Min: Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Healthcare System, Seoul 03722, Korea
Eunjeong Bae: College of Nursing and Brain Korea 21 FOUR Project, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea
Hooyun Lee: Graduate School of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea
Jongsoo Lee: School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: The time a patient spends waiting to be seen by a healthcare professional is an important determinant of patient satisfaction in outpatient care. Hence, it is crucial to identify parameters that affect the waiting time and optimize it accordingly. First, statistical analysis was used to validate the effective parameters. However, no parameters were found to have significant effects with respect to the entire outpatient department or to each department. Therefore, we studied the improvement of patient waiting times by analyzing and optimizing effective parameters for each physician. Queueing theory was used to calculate the probability that patients would wait for more than 30 min for a consultation session. Using this result, we built metamodels for each physician, formulated an effective method to optimize the problem, and found a solution to minimize waiting time using a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). On average, we obtained a 30% decrease in the probability that patients would wait for a long period. This study shows the importance of customized improvement strategies for each physician.

Keywords: operations research in health services; outpatient waiting time; queueing; statistical analysis; probabilistic meta-modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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