Assignment task: You work for a nurse midwife practice that offers a weekend walk-in option from 8-5 on Saturdays. The clinic staffs 1 nurse midwife to see patients during these times.
These weekend clinics are very popular, and often cited as a reason women choose this practice. Recently, the practice has experienced substantial growth and the Saturday clinics are getting crowded.
You collect and analyze recent data and find that: (1) the interarrival time is distributed exponentially with a mean of 19 minutes between arrivals; and (2) service times are not distributed exponentially, but the mean service time is 15 minutes, and the standard deviation is 10 minutes.
a. Describe this queueing system using Kendall notation.
b. Make the following calculations using Queuing analysis model
i. Average amount of time a patient will have to spend in the waiting room
ii. Total time a patient should expect to spend in the clinic
iii. Probability that no patients are at the clinic
iv. Average number of patients in the clinic
v. Average number of patients in the waiting room
c. Although this walk-in clinic has been a huge attraction for women choosing clinics, patients are unhappy because of the long wait time and word is getting around. In response, you have undertaken some quality improvement initiatives, and have decided to reduce the large amount of variation around service times. How much would you have to reduce the standard deviation of service times so that the expected wait time falls to 30 minutes? To 20 minutes?
d. What could the clinic do to achieve a 20-minute wait time? Explain.