Abstract: The purpose of this project was to analyze time that patients can spend waiting for service in Muhima District hospital. The main objective for this research was to provide necessary information to policy makers aimed to contribute in wellbeing of population by reducing waiting time for service because in excessive cases, long queues can delay appropriate decision for a specific disease that can cause occurrence of death while patient still waiting for service. This project examined, first the waiting time of patients in outpatient department by using queuing model after calculating the mean number of arrivals per hour and the mean number of patients served per hour. Further results from questionnaire from staff were analyzed in order to know their opinions about the waiting time in outpatient department. The results showed that the system utilization factor is greater than one. This means that the queue grew without bound. There were a big number of patients waiting in the queue and they waited for a long time before being seen by a physician. The correlation analysis revealed a significant negative correlation between days and patient arrivals which means that there were many patients on Monday more than Friday. The reasons given by staff interviewed were the big number of patients visiting this department and the shortage of staff. To reduce the waiting time, we suggested increasing the number of physicians and nurses in outpatient department and strengthening the capacity building of health care providers. The hospital should develop a staffing plan and put more effort in the beginning of the week for efficient use of available resources.
Keywords: Queuing model, Waiting time, Customer arrival, Customer service, Birth and Death process, Outpa- tient Department.
Title: Queuing Model for Healthcare Services in Public Health Facilities (A Case Study of Muhima Hospital)
Author: Augustin Dushime, Dr. Joseph K. Mung’atu, Dr. Marcel Ndengo
International Journal of Mathematics and Physical Sciences Research
ISSN 2348-5736 (Online)
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