Pediatric Children’s Clinic
Faisal Mohamed, Lei Hohme
Pediatric Orthopaedic Clinic Review
Problem
The Pediatric Orthopaedic Clinic at the children’s hospital of Western Ontario provides specialized pediatric services to children living around or near Ontario, Canada or as far away as the United States. With rising complaints about the patient wait times, management agreed to review the process and look for ways to reduce the waiting times by 20 percent.
1. What are the activity utilizations? Direct labor utilization?
In order to calculate the utilization rates, data that was retrieved and analyzed from patient surveys and time studies. Utilization rates were calculated as separate divisions and by the particular job title. To calculate the utilization rates for individual job functions, the number of total hours spent on the process was divided by the number of total hours available for work for the particular worker(s). Doing so, utilization rates were 74.07% for clerks, 81.83% for the main three nurses, 83.42% for technicians, 75.83% for radiologist, 57.25% for the extra nurse, 110.43% for the surgeon, 92.24% for the senior resident, and 90.04% for the cast technician (Appendix A). Similarly, to calculate the utilization rate for individual divisions, the number of total hours spent in the division was divided by the number of total available hours for that division. The corresponding utilization rates for the divisions were 67.43% for reception/front desk, 69.83% for radiology, 28.63% for x-ray hand off, and 97.57% for examination room (Appendix B).
2. What is the effect of variability? How can it be controlled?
The Radiology Department is used by the Pediatric, Urology and Chest Clinic and the ER. This leads to varying demands that depend on patient arrivals for each department which causes variability in the amount of time a patient has to wait to get treated. The more patients, the more likely the wait time will increase. One way to control this