Reducing Delay in Healthcare Delivery at Outpatients Clinics Using Discrete Event Simulation

Abstract

Outpatient clinics are demanding more consideration to enhance their performance and quality of care. This paper presents a thorough exploration of the outpatient clinics' environment at a local hospital. The ophthalmology outpatient clinic was selected for a case study. To this end, the total visit time and service times at stations were collected and fed into a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model. The model was validated through a statistical comparison with the performance of the real system. Various improvement alternatives were then proposed and investigated using the DES model. Key performance indicators of the system, including expected waiting time and expected visit length, were traced. Findings indicated that many improvement scenarios could be applied with significant amounts of reduction in waiting time up to 29 % and visit length up to 19 % without investing in new resources.