The Estimation of Patient's Waiting-Time Using Parking Time

주차시간을 이용한 외래환자 대기시간 추정

Background : Theoretically as the waiting-time of patient is estimated in queueing, many men and much money are needed. But being the estimation of patient s waiting-time very important in hospital service, so the continuous monitoring of waiting-time is inevitable. To verify that the estimation of waiting-time using parking time is economical, effective and continuous monitoring method and to develop utilizing the method, this study was done. Method : In parking confirmation office, the personnel of parking office wrote parking confirm time, chart number and whether medical examination and treatment finish or not in parking ticket. The next day the parking tickets were gathered and the above data were input. The input parking data were connected with the hospital outpatient file indexing chart number. Then the patient' s data for department, new patient or not, reservation or not, receipt time and payment time were retrieved. The group for finishing medical treatment were compared with that for not finishing in average time lag between confirmation and out-time for hospital. And In-time for hospital, receipt time, payment and out-time for hospital were also analyzed. Result : Confirming parking ticket, the group for finished medical treatment left hospital after 7 minutes. This result showed that the patient for finished medical treatment left hospital immediately. So parking time was reasonable to estimation of hospital-time was concluded. The time for medical treatment, diagnosis and test was constant for all patients and short for waiting time, Then I concluded that the parking time was reasonable for estimation patient's waiting time. Overall patient's waiting time was 113 minutes and new patient's time was 149 minutes, old patient's times was 109 minutes. Waiting time for reservation patient was 98 minutes and for non reservation patient was 122 minutes. The time from hospital arrival to payment was 50 minutes for the group of reservation patient and 69 minutes for non-reservation group. The time from payment to hospital leaving was 51 minutes and 56 minutes for non reservation group. The short time difference between reserved group and not reserved group from payment to hospital leaving time was due to bottle neck effect. Conclusion : The estimation of patient's waiting time using parking time was reasonable because the possession of car was common and the time for medical treatment was equal and the patient after treatment left hospital immediately. Using this method, timely, fast evaluation and continuous monitoring of the intervention effect were possible.