Solutions for improving the patient flow in a Day-hospital facility

Patients are the primary users of hospital services. Therefore, hospital managers must carefully take into consideration the effects on those subjects that can result from decisions concerning process capacity and organization. The route within the hospital facility and the overall time spent (flow time) in the process are aspects that have major impacts on the level of service from the patient’s point of view. While the sequence of activities to which a patient is subjected (workflow) largely depends on medical considerations, the route and flow time are influenced by the facility’s layout and the capacity and availability of resources. The study here presented was performed at the Day Hospital department of a specialized structure and was aimed at reducing the patients’ flow time by identifying the system’s bottlenecks, removing unnecessary waiting times and revising the patients’ routings. Waiting lines methods were employed to perform the analysis and test different configurations. The results show that a revision of the process plan and the rescheduling of patients could ideally decrease their waiting time by more than 80%.