Abstract:
This study focused on improving the performance of an Out Patient Department in a public
hospital in Sri Lanka. There were two basic processes at the department namely; ticketing and
channeling. The patients were first numbered and offered tickets before meeting the doctors.
Thereafter, they waited in a queue until one of the doctors become idle. The investigations observed
that the department currently operates with significant customer waiting times. Thus the aim of
this study was to reduce the customer waiting time in the observed queues. Although t several
doctors were serving, only two of them were considered in simulating the system. The sample size
was 150 patients. Observations were collected for two hours in two weekdays. The system was
simulated using the student version of Rockwell ARENA 14.5. The Input Analyzer recorded that
the arrival patterns of patients, ticketing and channeling processes to follow the BETA
distributions. The waiting times of patients in queues near ticketing counter, doctor 1 and doctor 2
were respectively 4.82, 34.99 and 26.82 in minutes. The study recommended doubling the resources
used at ticketing counter as a means of reducing the waiting time. The proposed model recorded the
corresponding waiting times of patients in queues near ticketing counter, doctor 1 and doctor 2 to
be 0.64, 26.73 and 14.52 in minutes. The study suggested to further study the system aiming at
locating another ticketing counter for the system by assessing the financial feasibility.
