Application of DMAIC Method and Discrete Event Simulation to Reduce Waiting Time in Outpatient Department

Abstract

The outpatient departments of hospitals in large cities have become more and more congested in recent years. Patients often spend excessively long time waiting during the whole outpatient procedure, which lowers the degree of patient satisfaction and increases patient complains about the outpatient service. This Paper utilizes the simulation-based Six Sigma DMAIC method to identify the defects of existing procedure in outpatient department of a general hospital in Tianjin and to propose solutions to ameliorate the outpatient procedure. Using software package named iGrafx IDEF0 2011 and relevant data, the existing outpatient procedure simulation model is constructed and validated. After analysis, defects behind the long waiting time are identified and several improvement scenarios are proposed. The improved simulation model which has implemented these scenarios shows that new outpatient procedure significantly reduces overall waiting time compared with the original one.