Article ID: | iaor20171366 |
Volume: | 6 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 77 |
End Page Number: | 89 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2017 |
Journal: | Health Syst |
Authors: | Boucherie Richard, van de Vrugt Maartje, Smilde Tineke, de Jong Mathijn, Bessems Maud |
Keywords: | medicine, simulation, queues: theory, scheduling |
When suspected tissue is discovered in a patient’s breast, swiftly available diagnostic test results are essential for medical and psychological reasons. The breast center of the Jeroen Bosch Hospital aims to comply with new Dutch standards to provide 90% of the patients an appointment within three working days, and to communicate the test results to 90% of the patients within a week. This case study reports on interventions based on a discrete time queueing model and discrete event simulation. The implemented interventions concern a new patient appointment schedule and an additional multi‐disciplinary meeting, which significantly improve in both the appointment and diagnostics delay. Additionally, we propose a promising new patient schedule to further reduce patient waiting times and staff overtime and provide guidelines for how to achieve implementation of Operations Research methods in practice.