Hospital Registration Process Reengineering Using Simulation Method

Abstract

With increasing competition, many healthcare organizations have undergone tremendous reform in the last decade aiming to increase efficiency, decrease waste, and reshape the way that care is delivered. This study focuses on the operational efficiency improvement of hospital’s registration process. The operational efficiency related factors including the service process, queue strategy, and queue parameters were explored systematically and illustrated with a case study. Guided by the principle of business process reengineering (BPR), a simulation approach was employed for process redesign and performance optimization. As a result, the queue strategy is changed from multiple queues and multiple servers to single queue and multiple servers with a prepare queue. Furthermore, through a series of simulation experiments, the length of the prepare queue and the corresponding registration process efficiency was quantitatively evaluated and optimized.