Healthcare Wait Time Analysis, Patient Flow, and Solutions

This report analyzes the critical issue of healthcare wait times and its impact on patient outcomes, encompassing factors like increased risk, mortality, and dissatisfaction. The report examines the causes of delays, including inadequate resources, poor scheduling, and inefficiencies in patient flow. It proposes several solutions, such as improved scheduling of appointments, optimized resource allocation, and increased surgical operation capacity to reduce wait times. The report highlights the importance of efficient hospital management, including streamlining admissions, optimizing surgical appointments, and managing patient discharge processes. The analysis emphasizes the need for proactive measures to address healthcare delays and improve patient satisfaction by leveraging efficient management strategies and resource optimization.

1. Delay in healthcare is important because increased in patient wait time is associated with
increased risk of severity in conditions, mortality, and increased dissatisfaction. Often is
it found that delay in healthcare settings is associated with factors such as (i) avoidance
or negligence in responsibility by professionals, increased work burden, and lack of
resources to accommodate the community health requirements; for which corrective
measures are essential (Mathews, Ryan & Bulman, 2015).
2. Patient flow is persuasive because it is associated with poor management and scheduling
of appointments, insufficient resources, and overcrowding in outdoor or emergency
departments. It is important because, improper scheduling f patient causes increased
health risk to community members. Furthermore, this is challenging because, it requires
the hospital administrator to increase workforce capacity and requires investment to make
the resource available.
3. The reduction in patient wait can be managed by implementing suitable policies to
schedule patient appointments. Additionally, the policies of insurance that include the
healthcare facility management by private hospitals, is an effective way to reduce the
wait list and length of delay. Possible option to manage scheduling of patient include (i)
streamlining the admission and handoffs, (ii) smoothening the surgical appointments, and
(iii) optimizing the discharge.
4. The capacity of surgery operations are required to be increased, which in turn can reduce
the wait time for patients as well as idle time for professionals. The operation
management help in reviewing the hospital capacity and the unused space can be
assigned to other patients for next day (Saghafian, Austin & Traub, 2015). It also helps in

scheduling of patient appointment according to the competent professionals availability,
which can help in avoiding delays.
References:
Saghafian, S., Austin, G. and Traub, S.J., 2015. Operations research/management contributions
to emergency department patient flow optimization: Review and research prospects. IIE
Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, 5(2), pp.101-123.
Mathews, M., Ryan, D. and Bulman, D., 2015. Patient-expressed perceptions of wait-time causes
and wait-related satisfaction. Current Oncology, 22(2), p.105.