Optimal resource allocation in network queuing system for healthcare delivery

In healthcare settings, where patients’ care involves multiple stages and various service providers, efficient resource allocation is critical. On this perspective, classical queuing theory offers insights into patients’ flow dynamics and resource utilization, providing a foundation for understanding system performance. This research aims at effectively applying network queuing techniques to model and optimize resource allocation in network queuing systems for effective healthcare delivery. A network queuing system involving six departments that made up the healthcare service delivery at Immanuel General Hospital, Eket is formulated and analysed in this work to improve its operation, considering its arrival and departure rates as well as time spent at each node (waiting time). Also, simulation by bootstrap method was performed to test for the robustness as well as validation of the results. The distributions of inter arrival, service and waiting times of both observed and bootstrap data were modelled using the Easyfit (5.6) software at each phase to identify their respective distributions. Key queuing metrics such as resource utilization rates, which were obtained to be less than 1 in all cases, showed a stable system; the average number of patients in the queue; the average number of patients in the system and the average waiting times of patients in the queue and in the system for both observed and bootstrapped data were also obtained. Generally, the results provide insights for effective healthcare management system.