Optimising Outpatient Pharmacy Staffing to Minimise Patients Queue Time using Discrete Event Simulation

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 p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Putri Amelia, Artya Lathifah, Muhammad Dliya'ul Haq, Christoph Lorenz Reimann, Yudi Setiawan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitas Airlangga 2021-10-01
Series:Journal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence
Online Access:https://e-journal.unair.ac.id/JISEBI/article/view/26288
Description
Summary: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 Analysis 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 Analysis
ISSN:2598-6333
2443-2555