service performance improvement model: the case of teklehaymanot general hospital

In service sector, there are challenges in keeping an optimum balance between customers' demand and availability of resources. this problem is going to be more intense in the health sector due to the fact that both arrival and service times are random. therefore, designing the service environment by keeping the optimum balance between customers’ demand and available resources is becoming a series problem in teklehaymanot general hospital. this paper tries to develop a model that investigates the performances of teklehaymanot general hospital and determines the optimum number of specialist doctors based on their respective workload. to address this objective, the study develops a model using arena simulation software that considers the real working environment and scenario of teklehaymanot general hospital. for the purpose of this research, three years’ secondary data that include the type of services and number of specialized doctors under each service channel are collected from the hospital records and fitted to the model. the findings of the study show that there are unbalanced distributions on the daily workload among specialist doctors and extended long waiting time of patients in teklehaymanot general hospital. it reveals that specialist doctors who are working in pre-breast center, hematology oncology imaging, neurology, obstetrics & gynecology, ophthalmology, pulmonology, urgent care, urology and women’s imaging are relatively overloaded, whereas those who are working in ent allergy audiology, gastroenterology, nuclear medicine, orthopedics, physical therapy, and surgery are relatively underloaded. moreover, from the scenario analysis, the result shows that additional specialized doctors in the fifteen areas are required so as to reduce the waiting time of patients by 54.41%. therefore, the hospital is recommended to have a balanced workload distribution among specialist doctors and increase the number of specialist doctors by one or two in the fifteen service areas.