Mesa, Arizona Hospital (Q1-Q7) The Mesa, Arizona county hospital is assessing its Emergency Department (ED) capacity so it knows how to expand as the county population grows. The hospital has the following information about the ED:
Resource Number
| Resource |
Number |
| Nurses |
12 |
| Physicians |
5 |
| X-ray Technicians |
4 |
| Examination rooms |
10 |
|
|
3 |
On average, nurses need to spend 35 minutes with each patient that comes in. Additionally, physicians need to spend an average of 19 minutes with each patient. Each technician can X-ray up to 5 patients per hour. All patients have to go through one nurse, one physician and the X-ray.
Q1. What is the total capacity of Nurses, as in the maximum number of patients the Nurses can see in one hour? Round your answer to one decimal place.
Q2. What is the total capacity of Physicians, as in the maximum number of patients the Physicians can see in one hour? Round your answer to one decimal place.
Q3. What is the total capacity of the X-Ray Technicians (max number of patients that can be X-rayed in one hour)? Round your answer to one decimal place.
Thereafter, the patients are parsed into two categories: 20% of all patients that come into the ED are trauma victims that need to be placed in a trauma bay. The other 80% of the patients go into normal examination rooms.
Each trauma patient spends an average of 30 minutes in a trauma bay before leaving the ED (usually then being admitted to the main part of the hospital), whereas non-trauma patients spend an average of 45 minutes in an examination room before leaving the ED.
Q4. Suppose on average 50 patients come to the emergency department every hour. What is the implied utilization (in %) at the trauma bays? Recall there are 3 trauma bays. Round your answer to the nearest whole number.
Q5. Suppose on average 50 patients come to the emergency department every hour. What is the implied utilization at the examination rooms (in %)? Recall there are 10 examination rooms.
Q6. Which resource is the bottleneck?
a) Physicians
b) Nurses
c) X-Ray Technicians
d) Examination Rooms
e) Trauma Bays
Q7. Suppose we hired one more physician so that the total number of physicians becomes 6. What will be the capacity of the process, as in the maximum number of patients the Emergency Department can treat in one hour? Round your answer to one decimal place.