Waiting Line Design: A pediatric practice has 5 physicians. Historically, patients were assigned to one physician and the same physician always treated these patients. For example, Alices patients always visited her (for well visits and sick visits) and never interacted with the other physicians. However, they have decided to change how they see patients. Now patients will be seen by whoever is available (i.e., a working physician who is not busy treating other patients). Assume that this "pooling" of physicians is ceteris paribus, that is, it is the only change and there are no other changes. Based on our discussion of waiting lines, which of the three outcomes below are likely to occur due to this change?

i) The coefficient of variation of patient inter-arrival times will increase

ii) The utilization of each physician, u, will increase

iii) The average number of patients actually with a physician (that is, inventory in process, Ip) will increase

Notes: This can be a challenging question. When you answer this question, think, ceteris paribus, how the proposed "pooling" change affects different parts of the system including the inter-arrival times, queues, service durations, and servers. [FYI, c eteris paribus means other things remaining equal. So when the question talks about pooling physicians, we assume that this does not change anything else.]

Group of answer choices

a.) i only

b.) ii only

c.) iii only

d.) i and ii only

e.) i and iii only

f.) ii and iii only

g.) all of them (i, ii and iii)

h.) none of them (neither i, ii and iii)