A novel characterization of patient arrival process in healthcare facilities

Appropriate modelling for patient arrival is the first step in investigation of factors contributing to waiting time of both patients and the doctor in clinics. In previous practice, scheduled patient’s unpunctuality (i.e., the deviation from the scheduled appointment time) is often modelled either too typical that excludes some fundamental features of clinical observations, or too complex that might bring excessive difficulty to simulate and analyze. From observations of detailed workflow of community clinics, we can find that these models are not generally valid. In this paper, we proposed a modelling technique to characterise patient unpunctuality considering various groups of patient arrival behaviour. The adequacy of this model can be assessed by variation and standard error comparison with normal and Pearson type distributions. A sample simulation is given to exam the effects of various modelling techniques on patient waiting time and the doctor idle time. This proposed modelling technique might provide fundamental basis for improvement of appointment scheme in practical applications.