Patient flow improvement for an ophthalmic specialist outpatient clinic with aid of discrete event simulation and design of experiment

Chong Pan (), Dali Zhang, Audrey Kon, Charity Wai and Woo Ang

Health Care Management Science, 2015, vol. 18, issue 2, 137-155

Abstract: Continuous improvement in process efficiency for specialist outpatient clinic (SOC) systems is increasingly being demanded due to the growth of the patient population in Singapore. In this paper, we propose a discrete event simulation (DES) model to represent the patient and information flow in an ophthalmic SOC system in the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC). Different improvement strategies to reduce the turnaround time for patients in the SOC were proposed and evaluated with the aid of the DES model and the Design of Experiment (DOE). Two strategies for better patient appointment scheduling and one strategy for dilation-free examination are estimated to have a significant impact on turnaround time for patients. One of the improvement strategies has been implemented in the actual SOC system in the SNEC with promising improvement reported. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Ophthalmic specialist outpatient clinic; Discrete event simulation; Patient flow; Information flow; Design of experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10729-014-9291-1

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