• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.83-92
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• 2024

It is a common observation that whenever any patient arrives at the front desk of a hospital, outpatient clinic, or other health-associated centers, they have to first queue up in a line and wait to fill in their registration form to get admitted. The long waiting time without any status updates is the most common complaint, worrying health officials. In this paper, UrNext, a location-aware mobile-based solution using Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) technology, is presented to solve the problem. Recently, a technology-oriented method has been gaining popularity in solving the healthcare sector's problems, namely the Internet of Things (IoT). The implementation of this solution could be explained through a simple example that when a patient arrives at a clinic for her consultation. There, instead of having to wait in long lines, she will be greeted automatically, receive a push notification telling her that she has been admitted along with an estimated waiting time for her consultation session. This will not only provide the patients with a sense of freedom but would also reduce uncertainty levels that are generally observed, thus saving both time and money. This work aimed to improve clinics' quality of services and organize queues and minimize waiting times in clinics, leading to patient comfortability and reducing the burden on nurses and receptionists. The results demonstrated that the presented system was successful in its performance and helped achieve high usability.

• Proceedings of the Korean Statistical Society Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.289-294
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• 2004

We consider M/G/1 queue in which the customers are classified into n+1 classes by their impatience time. First, we analyze the model of two types of customers; one is the customer with constant impatience duration k and the other is patient customer. The expected busy period of the server and the limiting distribution of the virtual waiting time process are obtained. Then, the model is generalized to the one in which there are classes of customers according to their impatience duration.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.804-814
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• 2019

The patient's waiting time and length of stay have been reported as a factor decreasing their satisfaction in the hospital, especially in developing countries. This paper focuses on modeling hospital's outpatient department workflow in a developing country and optimizing the patient waiting time as well as total length of stay. By using discrete-event simulation, many alternative scenarios have raised, such as adding more working time, altering human resources, and adjusting the staff's responsibility, those scenarios will be examined to explore better settings for the hospital. The results show that possible to achieve a 9.6% reduction in patient total length of stay and it could be accomplished without adding more resources to the hospital.

• Clinics in Shoulder and Elbow
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.121-128
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• 2022

Background: To determine the reasons and factors that contribute to the cancellations of shoulder surgeries at a tertiary referral center and to analyze the characteristics of these patients. Methods: Patients scheduled for shoulder surgery from June 2017 to July 2019 were allocated to a surgery group (n=224) or a cancellation group (n=96). These groups were compared with respect to patient characteristics, types of surgery, distance from patient's home to the hospital, traveling time to the hospital, and waiting period before surgery. Reasons for cancellation and responses were acquired using a telephone interview and were subsequently analyzed. Results: The cancellation group was older, had a less frequent history of trauma, and had a lower proportion of patients undergoing arthroscopic rotator cuff repair than the surgery group (p=0.009, p=0.014, and p=0.017, respectively). In addition, mean distance from the patients' homes to the hospital and preoperative waiting time were both longer in the cancellation group (p=0.001 and p<0.01, respectively). The most common reason given for cancellation was another medical condition (28.1%). Conclusions: Older age, need for arthroscopic rotator cuff repair surgery, longer distance from the patient's home to the hospital, and longer waiting period significantly increased the chance of cancellation. The main reason for canceling surgery was a concurrent medical condition. Therefore, identification of other medical conditions in advance is an important consideration when surgeons recommend shoulder surgery to patients. Surgeons should also consider patient's age, type of surgery, distance from the hospital, and waiting time when assessing the possibility of surgery cancellation.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.25-35
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to forecast patient satisfaction and service value through the staged regression analysis of the relation between each factor and its satisfaction and service value, following the measurement of the quality of dental care service that patients recognize. And a self-administered survey was used for this study. The subjects of this survey were 394 outpatients of dental clinics located in K city in the period from Dec. 5, 2004 to Feb. 19, 2005, the questionnaire was composed of a total of 31 questions to measure the quality of overall dental care service(22 questions), the patient satisfaction(6 questions) and the service value(3 questions). The 7 points Likert scale ranging from "very poor"(1-point) to "very high"(7-point) was used for these questions The results of study could be summarized as follows: 1. The most useful index to predict patient satisfaction turned out to be "internal environment", followed by "treatment process and waiting time", "dentist", "external environment", and "dental hygienist". 2. The service value had a significant effect on the "internal environment", "dentist", "treatment process and waiting time". 3. The most useful index to predict the service value turned out to be "treatment process and waiting time", followed by "internal environment" and "dentist". Today, the quality of dental care service is becoming a prime concern since it is directly connected to a matter of survival of medical service organizations. Dental clinics desperately need patient-oriented marketing strategies in order to actively cope with changing medical environment. They also need to thoroughly examine possible measures to maximize the service value by establishing a variety of service strategies which can promote service quality that patients recognize.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.219-224
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• 2011

To improve medical service and customers' satisfaction by reducing actual waiting time for medical inspection by personalized examination guidance contents (PEGC) linked with medical information system (MIS). The suggested PEGC was completed with preparing transmission for data and PEGC by using transmission control protocol internet protocol (TCP/IP) which can be built up creditable data transmission service. When patient signal event appeared in MIS while the communication was in standby, the ID and data of the customer were shown as text and image on monitors in waiting room. Guiding inspections, steps of examination, and undressing information extracted from the PEGC was also shown to the appropriate patient. After installation of the suggested PEGC, we rechecked satisfaction rates of 60 customers who visited the hospital with a same method as initial survey. The results of this study suggest that 3.6 point of waiting time satisfaction index were improved, after installation of the suggested PEGC, as 4.6 point.

• Journal of applied mathematics & informatics
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• v.30 no.5_6
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• pp.749-757
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• 2012

We consider the M/PH,G/1 queue with two classes of customers in which class-1 customers have deterministic impatience time and have preemptive priority over class-2 customers who are assumed to be infinitely patient. The service times of class-1 and class-2 customers have a phase-type distribution and a general distribution, respectively. We obtain performance measures of class-2 customers such as the queue length distribution, the waiting time distribution and the sojourn time distribution, by analyzing the busy period of class-1 customers. We also compute the moments of the queue length and the waiting and sojourn times.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.27-44
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• 2009

The length of stay in emergency departments has been used as a quality indicator to reflect the overall efficiency of emergency care. Identifying characteristics associated with length of stay is critical to monitor overcrowding and improve efficient throughput function of emergency departments. This study examined the level of waiting time for initial assessment by physician and length of stay in emergency departments. Furthermore, we investigated the characteristics of patients' attendance associated with length of stay. An observational study was performed for a sample of 1,526 patients visiting ten nation-wide emergency departments. A structured form was designed to collect information about patients' demographics, route of admission, time and mode of arrival, triage level, cause of attendance, initial assessment time by physician, departure time, and disposition. Multiple regression analysis was performed to determine factors associated with length of stay. The average length of stay was 209.4 minutes (95% confidence interval [CI]=197.1-221.7), with a mean waiting time for initial assessment of 5.9 minutes (95% CI=5.1-6.7). After controlling for emergency department characteristics, increasing age, longer waiting times, attendance due to diseases, higher acuity, multiple diagnoses($\geq$2) and requiring admission or transfer to other health care facilities were positively associated with length of stay in emergency departments. The findings suggest that both patients' characteristics and the flow between emergency departments and parent hospitals should be taken into account in predicting length of stay in emergency departments.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.60-72
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• 1994

Background: The number of outpatients visiting large university teaching hospitals has increased drastically with the introduction of a nationwide health care insurance in 1989 and the improvement of the socio-economic status of the population. This resulted in long waiting times for services, particularly prescribed drugs, which have been patients' chief complaints. Hospitals have tried to solve the problem with limited success because their approach lacked comprehensive research. The objective of this study is to investigate associations between waiting times and variables defining a total work system. Methods: Data for the outpatient pharmacy department in a tertiary care university teaching hospital located in Seoul was analyzed to achieve the study objective. Associations of pharmacy system variables -- work load, work force, pharmacist work schedule, machine problems, and inventory control -- with mean and 99th percentile of waiting times were examined by the hierarchical stepwise regression method. Day was a unit of the analyses. Results: The regression models explained 65.8% of variance in the mean waiting time and 61.34% in the 99th percentile of waiting times. The break-down of the printer for drug envelops, Automatic Tablet Counters (ATCs), and main computer system lasted longer than 30 minutes increased the mean for 7.7 minutes, 4.5 minutes, and 7.0 minutes, respectively, and the 99th percentile for 14.8 minutes, 9.0 minutes, and 15.7 minutes, respectively. Concerning the work force, study results showed that there were significant differences in the productivity of pharmacists with work experience more than three years, one to three years, and less than one year, and showed that peak time aid work by pharmacists at job assignments other than the outpatient pharmacy, part-time pharmacists, and the installation of ATCs were effective in reducing waiting times, Finally, study findings indicated that the operational policy of work assignment and rotation schedule, supply and inventory of drugs at work tables, and readiness for undisrupted work during the work hours could have a significant effect on waiting times. Conclusion: The study results indicated that efforts to reduce waiting times for prescribed drugs should be geared toward every components of the pharmacy work system ranging from work schedule of pharmacists and supply of dugs at work tables. These findings should provide hospital managers with right directions in battling the problem.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.575-580
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• 2018

This paper discusses system for real-time monitoring of patient waiting time in hospitals based on open-source platform. It is necessary to make use of open-source projects to develop a high-performance stream processing system, which analyzes and processes stream data in real time, with less cost. The Hadoop ecosystem is a well-known big data processing platform consisting of numerous open-source subprojects. This paper first defines several requirements for the monitoring system, and selects a few projects from the Hadoop ecosystem that are suited to meet the requirements. Then, the paper proposes system architecture and a detailed module design using Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, and so on. The proposed system can reduce development costs by using open-source projects and by acquiring data from legacy hospital information system. High-performance and fault-tolerance of the system can also be achieved through distributed processing.