Read Chapter $10$ Case Study $-$ Waiting, Waiting, Waiting...

Case studies provide an excellent class method to explore chapter concepts in work settings. The

majority of the cases at the end of the chapters in this text come from real situations that have

been faced by healthcare managers. The intent of having you do these short cases is to engage you to gain a better understanding of the chapter concepts and to apply the concepts to develop reasonable answers to the cases$$ questions.$$ Similar to what you do in a real healthcare management role. Waiting, Waiting, Waiting $...$

Tim manages a medical clinic with $135$ physicians serving a county with a population of $\backslash (\backslash$mathbf$\{250,000\}\backslash ).$ The clinicians specialize in everything from primary care to urology. The clinic is home to a laboratory, X$-$ray facility, and outpatient surgery. Patients call to make appointments, and in most cases, they have to wait several days or longer to get in$.$ Once they make it to their appointment, some patients have to wait to get into a room. In making rounds one day, Tim found one patient who had been waiting for $45$ minutes and had not even had contact with a receptionist. No one noticed she had been sitting there all that time.

The clinic uses several criteria to slot the patients into appointment times. Some physicians, for example, see a patient and then require an X$-$ray during the appointment. Other visits are more straightforward and require little time. Most physicians want to see four patients per hour. They definitely do not want any empty appointment slots.

Some patients want to be seen for what they consider urgent needs but in fact are often mild fevers or sore throats. These patients are invited to fill the appointment slots that are left. Some doctors will fit patients in even though they have a full schedule. Some parents bring more than one child to a single appointment. Every day, emergencies occur, ranging from serious medical problems that take extra time to particularly harsh weather that slows or stops patients and staff from coming in$.$

All of the scheduling is done centrally by staff who are not clinically trained. Some longtime staff know many of the physicians. Some of the scheduling staff are relatively new. They receive on$-$the$-$job training and follow written protocols as they schedule appointments. However, most of the staff doing the scheduling are not familiar with the many procedures that take place in the clinic.