Open AccessOptimising Outpatient Pharmacy Staffing to Minimise Patients Queue Time using Discrete Event Simulation
Author(s) -
Putri Amelia,
Artya Lathifah,
Muhammad Dliya'ul Haq,
Christoph Lorenz Reimann,
Yudi Setiawan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of information systems engineering and business intelligence/journal of information systems engineering and business intelligence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2598-6333
pISSN - 2443-2555
DOI - 10.20473/jisebi.7.2.102-111
Subject(s) - pharmacy , staffing , discrete event simulation , operations management , service (business) , quality (philosophy) , service quality , unit (ring theory) , outpatient clinic , queueing theory , medical emergency , queue management system , medicine , business , nursing , marketing , computer science , simulation , engineering , psychology , computer network , philosophy , mathematics education , epistemology
Background: To remain relevant in the customer-oriented market, hospitals must pay attention to the quality of services and meet customers' expectations from admission to discharge stage. For an outpatient customer, pharmacy is the last unit visited before discharge. It is likely to influence patient satisfaction and reflect the quality of hospital's service. However, at certain hospitals, the waiting time is long. Resources need to be deployed strategically to reduce queue time. Objective: This research aims to arrange the number of staff (pharmacists and workers) in each station in the pharmacy outpatient service to minimise the queue time.Methods: A discrete simulation method is used to observe the waiting time spent at the pharmacy. The simulation run is valid and effective to test the scenario. Results: It is recommended to add more personnel for the non-compounding medicine and packaging to reduce the waiting time by 22.41%Conclusion: By adding personnel to non-compounding and packaging stations, the system performance could be improved. Cost-effectiveness analysis should be done to corroborate the finding. Keywords: Discrete Event Simulation, Hospital, Outpatient Service, Pharmacy Unit, System AnalysisBackground: To remain relevant in the customer-oriented market, hospitals must pay attention to the quality of services and meet customers' expectations from admission to discharge stage. For an outpatient customer, pharmacy is the last unit visited before discharge. It is likely to influence patient satisfaction and reflect the quality of hospital's service. However, at certain hospitals, the waiting time is long. Resources need to be deployed strategically to reduce queue time. Objective: This research aims to arrange the number of staff (pharmacists and workers) in each station in the pharmacy outpatient service to minimise the queue time.Methods: A discrete simulation method is used to observe the waiting time spent at the pharmacy. The simulation run is valid and effective to test the scenario. Results: It is recommended to add more personnel for the non-compounding medicine and packaging to reduce the waiting time by 22.41%Conclusion: By adding personnel to non-compounding and packaging stations, the system performance could be improved. Cost-effectiveness analysis should be done to corroborate the finding. Keywords:Discrete Event Simulation, Hospital, Outpatient Service, Pharmacy Unit, System Analysis