Planning laboratory staffing with a queueing model

Service organizations that strive for growth in a competitive environment face a difficult task of capacity planning. Adequate facility size that provides quality service in a cost-effective manner is critical to the success and long-term viability of the organization. The process of determining the desired level of capacity must include an impact evaluation of various capacity alternatives and the levels of anticipated demand on service quality and revenues. Queuing problems occur in operations, including the design of facility layouts, staffing decisions, and physical capacity problems. Queuing theory is useful in analyzing many of the problems associated with process design. Analytical queuing models may be used to obtain a first approximation to a queuing problem or to make a low-cost analysis. Relying upon some statistical concepts and results of the queuing technique, this paper proposes a framework for an actual outpatient phlebotomy laboratory that is designed to identify an optimal configuration of capacity level and the business volume for which the amount of revenues is maximum. The case of an actual hospital laboratory is analyzed for illustration.