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Modeling and analysis of work flow and staffing level in a computed tomography division of University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation

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Abstract

In this paper, a Markov chain model is developed to model the work flow in a computed tomography (CT) imaging department at University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation. Using this model, we estimate the patient length of stay and investigate different configurations of radiology specialists for potential efficiency improvement to reduce flow time and cost. What-if analysis is carried out to investigate the impact of various staffing levels and sensitivity study is used to identify the bottleneck operation, i.e., the most impeding one whose improvement can lead to the highest productivity increase.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank J. Fenske, F.-H. Liu, B. S. Simpson of University of Wisconsin - Madison for their work on data collection and initial analysis, and thank E. Konkol of University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation for coordinating the project, and the staffs at Medical Imaging Department of University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation for their help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1513 University Avenue, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Junwen Wang, Shichuan Quan & Jingshan Li

  2. Medical Imaging Department, University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, 1 South Park Street, Madison, WI, 53715-1375, USA

    Amy M. Hollis

Authors
  1. Junwen Wang
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  2. Shichuan Quan
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  3. Jingshan Li
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  4. Amy M. Hollis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jingshan Li.

Additional information

This paper is supported in part by NSF Grant No. CMMI 1063671.

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Wang, J., Quan, S., Li, J. et al. Modeling and analysis of work flow and staffing level in a computed tomography division of University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation. Health Care Manag Sci 15, 108–120 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-011-9188-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-011-9188-1

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