Patient flow and resource utilization in an outpatient clinic Academic Article

abstract

• This paper describes the results of a study taken at an outpatient clinic to describe and quantify issues related to patient flow and resource utilization for an individual physician during the delivery of primary health care. A discrete-event simulation model is constructed of the physician's practice to examine the relationship between examining room capacity and patient flow across four clinic-based performance measures. A simulation experiment is presented with results identifying several important and generalizable aspects of outpatient clinic operations. In particular, increased resource utilization does not necessarily imply longer waiting lines nor longer patient flow times.

authors

• Cote, Murray

published proceedings

• Socio-Economic Planning Sciences

author list (cited authors)

• Ct, M. J.

citation count

• 53

complete list of authors

• Côté, Murray J

publication date

• September 1999

publisher

• Elsevier  Publisher

published in

• Socio-Economic Planning Sciences  Journal

keywords

• Clinical Research

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1016/s0038-0121(99)00007-5

start page

• 231

end page

• 245

volume

• 33

issue

• 3

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0038-0121(99)00007-5