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MGT620 - County Hospital Ñ Process Improvement
MGT620 - County Hospital Ñ Process Improvement
County Hospital
had limited
resources with
limited
technicians
efficiency for its X-ray operations. In the present context, County Hospital has
five people to handle the entire X-ray operations. There are two X-ray labs and
one dark room, and an inspection room for X-ray. X-ray labs and X-ray inspection
room is generally managed by the X-ray technicians whereas the dark room staff
manages the dark room related activities. The operational process at the County
Hospital is identical for all the patients.
Problem Background: Extremely high waiting time
Resource utilization
and efficiency were
two significant
problems that led to
increase in waiting
time
day. It can be said that each patient has to wait for nearly 4 hours which is
certainly lengthy and is more than the expected waiting time among the patients.
Employee efficiency is nearly 80% for the departments except the x-ray
technician. This technician is certainly underperforming and is one of the reasons
for lengthy waiting times. It is clearly evident that the hospital is having an issue
of lengthy waiting time. In case this issue continues then it impacts on the
customer satisfaction and hence the business.
Opportunities: Increasing the dark rooms
Waiting time between the existing working stations has been the significant issue
for the county hospital specifically in the X-ray department. There is a need for
increasing the resources as well as the manpower for increasing the efficiency of
Time Pattern
Taken
Description
In uniform(a,b), time taken =
1. FRONT DESK
2. XRAY LAB
3. DARK ROOM
4. INSPECTION
Unit(2,5)
Nor(15,5)
Nor(10,5)
Nor(3,1.5)
3.5
15
10
3
5. EXIT DESK
Unit(2,5)
Total Time Taken
3.5 (a+b)/a
(a+b)/a
In Normal(m,d), time taken = m
In Normal(m,d), time taken = m
In Normal(m,d), time taken = m
In uniform(a,b), time taken =
35 mins
One of the ways to increase the efficiency at the hospital is to decrease the wait
times and one such area where time can be decreased is the lobbies. In this
context the non-value added time for the above process can be evaluated by
adding the mean cycle times from every lobby.
Improved Model
The data from the hospital is run through Simquick as it helps in allowing more
number of simulations to be performed within a reasonable amount of time and
also helps in achieving accurate results (Hill, 2002). County Hospital to improve
its efficiency needs to add resources to its existing ones. In this context adding an
It can be observed that even after adding a new X-ray lab the efficiency level is
Increase in the dark
rooms rather than Xray labs has led to the
increase in efficiency
not increased to a great extent. It implies that of the 90 clients arriving at the front
desk only 37 are being served. This means that remaining 53 patients have to wait
for their turn patiently. It is quite clear that it may take more than a day for
performing X-ray on all these patients as the average number of patients in a day
seems to be 38.
same time increase the resource utilization. Efficiency will be improved when the
resource utilization increases and vice versa. As per Walter (1973), there is always
increase in efficiency when the proportion of the appointments with the number of
patients get increased. There is a need for improving the employee efficiency
before investing in the new equipment. This is because even if new equipment
and new technicians are added there is no guarantee that the efficiency will be
increased. This is observed when an additional x-ray lab was added the efficiency
hardly increased. There is a need for effective training and development
programs.
In this process it is necessary to hire professional radiographers rather than
dealing with X-ray technicians. Radiographers are medical imaging technologists
performing medical imaging by offering higher quality X-ray pictures or images.
This will help in addressing two issues first it helps in efficiency rate of the
County Hospital at the same time it decrease the 25% failure rate. Radiographers
10th
March
2015
from
http://www.insideradiology.com.au/pages/view.php?
T_id=9#.VQE5UnyUflE
Walter, S. D. (1973). A comparison of appointment schedules in a hospital
radiology
department, British
journal
of
preventive
&
social