A study on patient satisfaction in a batch allocation environment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the queuing problem in Singapore’s healthcare

system and increase patient satisfaction by improving their queuing experience. This

paper investigates the impact of waiting time and serving order of patients on their

satisfaction as well as the relationship between batch size and the two factors.

For this purpose, existing published materials were studied to identify candidates for

significant factors, after which information was collected from two sources. First, faceto-

face interviews were conducted with the doctors and staff at the NTU Clinic to

understand the current situation and strategies implemented. Second, a survey was

conducted in Nanyang Technological University. Based on the survey results, a

simulation was run to find the optimal value of batch size to minimize the operation and

reneging cost of the clinic as well as the opportunity cost of the patients.