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The object of this study is to build the simulation model for an
urology clinic, and to evaluate the current appointment system
of the clinic. The simulation model is built by the MedModel
simulation language. The criteria of the performance evaluation
are cycle time, waiting time, and physician utilization. The
cycle time is the time that patients spend through the entire
process from the initiation to the end. The waiting time is the
time that patients wait for consulting doctors. The physician
utilization means the proportion of the actual working time to
the total working time. The patients are classified into
appointment patients and walk-in patients. The parameters and
programming of the model will be changed under different
alternatives. Then, the results of these alternatives will be
evaluated.Results are summarized as follows:1. If the patients
visit physicians in the sequence of the registered number based
on the present method for assigning numbers, then the average
waiting time of the appointment patients for consulting doctors
will decrease 600 seconds, but the average waiting time of the
walk-in patients will increase 580 seconds.2. If the arrival
time of the appointment patients is adequately decentralized in
the practice time, the waiting time for both the appointment and
walk-in patients will decrease. Based on the present method for
assigning numbers, the sequence of the registered number of the
patients'' visiting, and the delay control of the behavior of the
appointment patients in the time sections while Doctor A
practices, if the time lag of the appointment patients'' arrival
rises to five minutes( the present time lag is three minutes ),
the average cycle time of each patient will decrease 324.53
seconds. If the time lag of the appointment patients'' arrival
rises to seven minutes based on the same conditions without
Doctor A practicing, the average cycle time of each patient will
decrease 467.21 seconds.3. If the present method of assigning
the sequence numbers of visiting physicians is changed to the
idea that appointment patients get odd numbers and walk-in
patients get even numbers, the average waiting time of each
patient will decrease 307.55 seconds.This study builds the
simulation model for the urology clinic. The model can be used
for further research in the future, including the evaluation of
human resources and equipment utilization, process change, cost
and benefit analysis for increasing or decreasing the number of
infirmaries and etc.
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