To pool or not to pool in hospitals: a theoretical andpractical comparison for a radiotherapy outpatient department

This paper examines whether urgent and regular patients waiting for a consultation at a radiotherapy outpatient department should be pooled or not. Both queuing theory and discrete event simulation were applied to a realistic case study. The theoretical approach shows that pooling is not always bene...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of operations research 2010-07, Vol.178 (1), p.77-89
Main Authors: Joustra, Paul, Sluis, Erik, Dijk, Nico M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Consultation
Hospitals
Operations research
Patients
Pools
Queueing theory
Radiotherapy
Simulation
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This paper examines whether urgent and regular patients waiting for a consultation at a radiotherapy outpatient department should be pooled or not. Both queuing theory and discrete event simulation were applied to a realistic case study. The theoretical approach shows that pooling is not always beneficial with regard to the waiting times of urgent patients. Furthermore, the practical approach indicates that the separation of queues may require less capacity to meet the waiting time performance target for urgent as well as regular patients. The results seem to be of general interest for hospitals.
ISSN:0254-5330
1572-9338
DOI:10.1007/s10479-009-0559-7