A proposal of standarization to calculate count, turnaround and response time of work orders and their application in a queuing model

This paper puts forward a new proposal to calculate count, turnaround, response and service time of work orders in a clinical engineering (CE) department. These are calculated by means of a queuing model as a measurement tool. This proposal was tested in a 600 bed hospital, with an inventory of 1094 medical devices and with 6 full time Clinical Engineers. In April-1999 a simulation (with ARENA 3.01 developed by System Modeling Corporation) of the working of this proposal was performed with desired values being applied to the queuing model. At the end of 2002, real work order data from the database was recorded. As predicted, the results showed that all the indicators of nonscheduled work orders decreased. Response and turnaround time were reduced from 27 to 0.56 hours and 27.48 to 1.13 hours respectively. From a backlog of 22 outstanding repair orders per month between April 1999 and January 2000 the number was reduced to 4 in December 2002. The queuing model also helped to measure the positives effects on arrival and service rates when users and CE were trained. The difference between simulated and real values was under 5%.