Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation
8-2011
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
M.S.
Department
Industrial Engineering
Committee Chair
Evans, Gerald W.
Author's Keywords
Overbooking; Simulation; No-show rate; Multi-resource; Clinic; Arena
Subject
Medical appointments and schedules; Simulation methods
Abstract
Healthy for Life is a relatively new University of Louisville medical clinic which attempts to stem the epidemic of childhood obesity. This program offers a range of face-to-face services for overweight children. The main problem addressed by this research is the no show rate (nearly 50%) of the clinic. There are two goals of this thesis. One is to increase the staff utilization; the other is to decrease the waiting time. In this thesis, we study two potential methods to solve this problem. One involves using multiple resources for every visit; the other involves overbooking the patients. Two simulation models were developed for studying the system. One is an overbooking model in which the interarrival times are controlled for each type of patients. By increasing arrival rate of patients I the waiting time I the total number of served patients and the utilization of staff are increased. We need to trade off in order to choose the best arrival rate for the clinic. The second model involves using multiple resources for every visit. Each time a returning patient can visit one or two staff personnel depending on their willingness. We also change the interarrival time for patients in order to estimate the best values for these inputs.
Recommended Citation
Sun, Bo, "Simulation modeling and analysis of a multi-resource medical clinic." (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1404.
https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1404
