Queuing Theory

Patients taking long on waiting lines for medical services has led to delay accessing health services and loss of lives while on queue. This research will be carried out in Iten County Referral Hospital (ICRH) tuberculosis (TB) outpatient clinic. The study design will be cross-sectional and data will be collected using designed questionnaire and observations for patients attending (TB) clinic using simple random sampling. The data collected will be analyzed using Statistical software R. Using queuing theory principles and formulas I will determine the arrival rate, service rate ,expected time spent in the queue, expected time spent in consultation room and probability that n patients are in the service system at a given time. The broad objective will be to determine how

Queuing theory and model analysis has been a global challenge, In United States of America, after several years of health sector restructure and the number of hospitals continues to decrease in number. This has led to crowds, particularly in emergency department and Intensive Care Units (ICUs). (McManus.M.L, Long M.C and Litvak.E., 2004.)

In the past, attempts have been made to apply queuing analysis to a variety of hospital activities, including cardiac care units and emergency departments. (McManus.M.L, Long M.C and Litvak.E., 2004.)

Various attempts by the Federal Government of Nigeria to improve on health care services will not yield good results except the issue of time spent by patients at various hospital points is addressed. The need for application of queuing theory in healthcare settings is very important because the well-being and life of someone is concerned. The time spent by a patient while waiting to be attended to by a doctor is critical to the patient and to the image of the hospital before the public. (Ameh.N, Sabo.B, and Oyefabi M. O.,