title: Discrete Event Simulation Models for CT Examination Queuing in West China Hospital.
abstract: In CT examination, the emergency patients (EPs) have highest priorities in the queuing system and thus the general patients (GPs) have to wait for a long time. This leads to a low degree of satisfaction of the whole patients. The aim of this study is to improve the patients' satisfaction by designing new queuing strategies for CT examination. We divide the EPs into urgent type and emergency type and then design two queuing strategies: one is that the urgent patients (UPs) wedge into the GPs' queue with fixed interval (fixed priority model) and the other is that the patients have dynamic priorities for queuing (dynamic priority model). Based on the data from Radiology Information Database (RID) of West China Hospital (WCH), we develop some discrete event simulation models for CT examination according to the designed strategies. We compare the performance of different strategies on the basis of the simulation results. The strategy that patients have dynamic priorities for queuing makes the waiting time of GPs decrease by 13 minutes and the degree of satisfaction increase by 40.6%. We design a more reasonable CT examination queuing strategy to decrease patients' waiting time and increase their satisfaction degrees.
authors.affiliation: Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Hangjiang
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0658-2246
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Huchang
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8278-3384
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.affiliation: Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Shijun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Yingkang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.
authors.forename: Huili
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D002681:China; D003198:Computer Simulation; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D058005:General Practitioners; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D061665:Time-to-Treatment; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*