APPLICATION OF QUEUEING THEORY

IN
HEALTH CARE
What is queueing theory?

• Queuing theory is the mathematical study of the

congestion and delays of waiting in line. Queuing
theory examines every component of waiting in
line to be served, including the arrival process,
service process, number of servers, number of
system places, and the number of customers.
• As a branch of operations research, queuing theory
can help users make informed business decisions
on how to build efficient and cost-effective
workflow systems.

Real-life applications of queuing theory cover a wide range of

applications, such as how to provide fast customer service improve
traffic flow, efficiently ship orders from a warehouse, and design of
telecommunications systems, from data networks to call centres.

How Queuing Theory Works?

Queues happen when resources are limited. In fact, queues make

economic sense; no queues would equate to costly overcapacity.
Queuing theory helps in the design of balanced systems that serve
customers quickly and efficiently but do not cost too much to be
sustainable. All queuing systems are broken down into the entities
queuing for an activity.

At its most elementary level, queuing theory involves the analysis of

arrivals at a facility, such as a bank or fast food restaurant, then the
service requirements of that facility, e.g., tellers or attendants.
The origin of queuing theory can be traced back to the early 1900s,
found in a study of the Copenhagen telephone exchange by Agner
Krarup Erlang, a Danish engineer, statistician and, mathematician.
His work led to the Erlang theory of efficient networks and the field
of telephone network analysis. Queues are not necessarily a negative
aspect of a business, as their absence suggests overcapacity.

Benefits of Queuing Theory

By applying queuing theory, a business can develop more efficient

queuing systems, processes, pricing mechanisms, staffing solutions,
and arrival management strategies to reduce customer wait times
and increase the number of customers that can be served.

Queuing theory as an operations management technique is

commonly used to determine and streamline staffing needs,
scheduling, and inventory, which helps improve overall customer
service.

• Real-life applications of queuing theory cover a

wide range of applications, such as how to provide
faster customer service, improve traffic flow,
efficiently ship orders from a warehouse, and
design of telecommunications systems, from data
networks to call centers.

• Queuing theory can be applied to the analysis of

waiting lines in healthcare settings. Most of
healthcare systems have excess capacity to
accommodate random variations, so queuing
analysis can be used as short-term measures, or
for facilities and resource planning.
 • Patient queues are prevalent in healthcare and
wait time is one measure of access to care. This
established theory helps us to quantify the
appropriate service capacity to meet the patient
demand, balancing system utilization and the
patient's wait time.

Other use of queuing analysis and simulation in

healthcare includes the following:

• Walk-in patient clinic, emergency room arrivals,

phone calls from physician office to health
management organization, outpatient clinics and
outpatient surgeries, physician offices, pharmacy,
inventory control. Healthcare resource and
infrastructure planning for disaster management
and public health.

Need for application of queuing theory in health care

• The need for application of queuing theory in

healthcare settings is very important because the
well- being and life of someone is concerned. The
time spent by a patient while waiting to be attended
to by a doctor is critical to the patient and to the
image of the hospital before the public.

Queueing model

• Queueing models require very little data and result

in relatively simple formulae for predicting various
performance measures such as mean delay or
probability of waiting more than a given amount of
time before being served. This means that they are
easier and cheaper to use and can be more readily
used to find “optimal" solutions rather than just
 estimating the system performance for a given
scenario.

Kendall's notation for Queueing Models

• Queueing theorists typically use Kendall's notation

as short-cut notation for complete descriptions of
queueing models. That notation comprises five
essential characteristics. These are the (1) Arrival
Process (A), (2) Service Time Distribution (B), (3)
Number of Servers (C), (4) System Capacity (K),
and (5) Service Discipline (D).
• If the service discipline is not given, it is assumed
to be First-Come-First-Served (FCFS).

Positi Meaning Description

on
1st (A) Arrival This parameter describes how customers arrive at the sy
Process whether they arrive in groups or as individuals and the d
arrival times.
2nd (B) Service This parameter describes the distribution of service time
Time
Distributi
on
3rd (C) Number Often this parameter is 1, meaning that there is only one
of server systems are common, and so most results are gen
Servers number of servers, c. Some queues can also have infinite
4th (K) System This parameter indicates how many customers can be se
Capacity including those in service. It is often assumed to be suffic
be an issue.
5th (D) Service This parameter refers to the order (or discipline) that arr
Disciplin served. For most examples the discipline is First Come Fi
e other options exist such as Last Come First Served (LCFS
Random Order (SIRO)

Example:

Consider a residential drug treatment facility. This

hypothetical facility can be modelled using an
M/D/c queue. First, potential customers
(individuals requiring treatment) arrive, at random,
according to a Poisson process with some constant
rate (M for arrivals). If space is available for them
to enter treatment they do; otherwise, they must
wait. Second, services take a deterministic amount
of time: each patient spends k weeks in treatment
and then is discharged (D for service). Facility
capacity is determined by the number of patients
they can house at one time, here referred to as the
number of beds (c servers). We also assume that
the waiting list has no maximum and that the
arrival rate does not depend on the number of
clients being treated at a point in time. Finally, we
assume decisions about whom to treat is "First
Come First Served".