| One major issue facing the health care industry is the need to measure delivery of care in order to ensure efficiency and quality. For outpatient care especially, patient wait time is an important piece of quality of service and can greatly effect the success of a practice. The Freeway (FWY) Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) clinic, which is associated with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), is a complex practice, made up of several types of clinics. This includes regular obstetrics and gynecology, high-risk obstetrics, genetics, fertility, urology gynecology, and private ultrasound patients. The purpose of this study is to develop a simulation model of the clinic, validate the model using data from the clinic, and use the validated model to make predictions of changes to clinic operations on performance (i.e. patient wait time). Four months (from 3/1/2013 to 6/30/2013) of data were used in this study. Though the model could not be validated with this data, "what-if" scenarios were created with the purpose of illustrating how the simulation model could be used to make conclusions about clinic operations, once validated. |
