On Congestion in Outpatient Walk-In Clinics.

Abstract

The research report describes a mathematical model of the Army's Acute Minor Illness Clinic. The model was formulated and tested with data from the clinic at Silas B. Hays Army Hospital, Fort Ord, California. The model describes clinic congestion in a queueing context. Quite apart from the clinic model, a technique for solving multichannel queueing problems with inhomogeneous Poisson arrival streams is presented. The technique, essentially a computational algorithm, was used to write a computer program allowing on-line conversational interaction with the model, or off-line computation. Such important questions as applicability of the modelling assumptions are discussed. Walk-in clinic studies have appeared infrequently, and the computational algorithm appears to be new, despite its simplicity and potentially wide applicability to other problems.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA013563

Entities

People

  • Richard W. Butterworth

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • California
  • Computations
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Congestion
  • Hospitals
  • Mathematical Analysis
  • Mathematical Models
  • Mathematics
  • Models
  • Multichannel

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Medical or Health Care Field.
  • Statistical inference.