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The reason you have to wait 6 weeks is that the doctor's office does not have infinite capacity, and increasing that capacity would require adding nurses, docto

The reason you have to wait 6 weeks is that the doctor's office does not have infinite capacity, and increasing that capacity would require adding nurses, doctors, and rooms. Instead, the 6 weeks is a result of 1) the number of people who wish to get appointments, 2) the time that each person spends, and 3) the number of people who can be treated at a time: MeanResponseTime = MeanNumberInSystem / MeanThroughput [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law#Finding_response_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law#Finding_respons...

nradov 9y ago
That doesn't really work for medical offices. A better solution is to reserve more schedule slots each day for patients who call or just show up that day. That makes the overall system more efficient since patients with urgent symptoms don't have to go to urgent care or ER.
- trendia 9y ago
  Urgent Care clinics might help fill the gap between long term care (where delays are OK) and emergencies (where delays are not OK).
  - nradov 9y ago
    Urgent care is still more expensive than visiting your regular doctor. And it's less effective because the urgent care doctors are less familiar with you as a patient, so it takes longer to get up to speed on current symptoms and the risk of error is higher.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
Since this is a social problem, you can add a complication that the response time has an impact on the throughput. If people call for an appointment, and find they have openings this afternoon and tomorrow morning, they'll be more likely to go to the doctor. If they find that the earliest appointments are 12 weeks out (as I did when trying to schedule a physical before a recent trip to Asia - ended up skipping the appointment), they're going to go elsewhere. If you're viewing the queue as a sort of plumbing system, this can be approximated as backpressure.
kgwgk 9y ago
For the same values of 1), 2) and 3) the waiting time could be 6 weeks, 6 days or 6 months. At least I understand 1) to be the inflow (people/time) and the inverse of 2) times 3) to be the outflow, and in equilibrium both willbe equal to the throughput.

nradov 9y ago

That doesn't really work for medical offices. A better solution is to reserve more schedule slots each day for patients who call or just show up that day. That makes the overall system more efficient since patients with urgent symptoms don't have to go to urgent care or ER.

trendia 9y ago
Urgent Care clinics might help fill the gap between long term care (where delays are OK) and emergencies (where delays are not OK).
- nradov 9y ago
  Urgent care is still more expensive than visiting your regular doctor. And it's less effective because the urgent care doctors are less familiar with you as a patient, so it takes longer to get up to speed on current symptoms and the risk of error is higher.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

Since this is a social problem, you can add a complication that the response time has an impact on the throughput. If people call for an appointment, and find they have openings this afternoon and tomorrow morning, they'll be more likely to go to the doctor. If they find that the earliest appointments are 12 weeks out (as I did when trying to schedule a physical before a recent trip to Asia - ended up skipping the appointment), they're going to go elsewhere. If you're viewing the queue as a sort of plumbing system, this can be approximated as backpressure.

kgwgk 9y ago

For the same values of 1), 2) and 3) the waiting time could be 6 weeks, 6 days or 6 months. At least I understand 1) to be the inflow (people/time) and the inverse of 2) times 3) to be the outflow, and in equilibrium both willbe equal to the throughput.