Modeling and analysis of work flow and staffing level in a computed tomography division of University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation

Abstract

In this paper, a Markov chain model is developed to model the work flow in a computed tomography (CT) imaging department at University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation. Using this model, we estimate the patient length of stay and investigate different configurations of radiology specialists for potential efficiency improvement to reduce flow time and cost. What-if analysis is carried out to investigate the impact of various staffing levels and sensitivity study is used to identify the bottleneck operation, i.e., the most impeding one whose improvement can lead to the highest productivity increase.