Enhancing the scheduling of interventional radiology department using data analysis and modeling and simulation

This paper focuses on improving the overall operations of an interventional radiology department at a community hospital in USA. In the first phase of the improvement process, significant delays, involving waiting time of patients in preparation rooms, delays in their arrival to procedure rooms, and waiting time for the radiologists, were observed. A thorough analysis of the delays led to the second improvement phase, wherein the case scheduling methodology was evaluated. Through a Design of Experiment (DOE) approach, it was determined that patient¿s age and the different radiologists do not have significant impacts on the procedure time. A discrete-event simulation model was then created to replicate a baseline of the current system, upon which a new scheduling model, which incorporates procedure time-blocks, was identified and evaluated. The proposed scheduling model resulted in a 16% increase in room utilization and 11% increase in daily procedure throughput, without requiring any additional resources.