Journal of Advances in Technology and Engineering Research
Details
Journal ISSN: 2414-4592
Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.20474/jater-2.6.2
Received: 21 September 2016
Accepted: 20 October 2016
Published: 19 December 2016
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  • Application of lean technique for outpatient service time improvement in public hospital of Thailand


Chanawee Aueprasert, Wuthichai Wongthatsanekorn

Abstract

Currently, the number of outpatients at one of the public hospitals has been rising. The 3-month data showed that the average total time of each outpatient is 92.884 minutes. This research aims to improve this figure by applying lean technique. Current business process is mapped into simulation model. The model is built based on the fitted data that are collected from each process. The result from running simulation model shows that the maximum number of work in process takes place at payment unit by 43.26 people. The blood test unit yields the highest waiting time at 31.57 minutes. Two approaches are proposed for improvement. From the simulation result, the first approach can reduce the average total time by 6.34% and the average number of patients at the payment process to 78.36%. Similarly, the second approach can reduce the average total time by 1.63% and the waiting time at the blood test unit by 21.25%. When two approaches are both applied together, the results show that the average total time, the average number of patients at the payment process reduces by 6.28 and 63.15 percent respectively.