Assignment:
A small medical office sees patients on a walk-in basis only. On average 15 patients per hour enter the office. All patients register at the registration window with a registration clerk (RC), which takes 2 minutes. After this, but before being seen by a nurse practitioner (NP), the registration records clerk (RRC) pulls the patient's medical records which takes 4 minutes. Each patients then sees an NP who checks weight, temperature, and blood pressure. This takes 3 minutes. The NP determines if the patient must see a doctor (MD) or can be processed by a Physician's Assistant (PA). There is one MD, one PA, one NP, one RRC, one billing clerk (BC), and one RC at the present time. The NP sends 40% of patients to the PA and 60% to the MD. The PA takes on average 5 minutes/patient whereas the MD takes 12 minutes/patient. After the patient sees the PA and/or the MD, the patient pays the bill or processes the insurance information with the BC, which takes 6 minutes per patient. Then the patient exits the medical office.
A. Draw a process map (flowchart) diagram of this office and clearly label every step in the operation of this medical office. Place processing times and percentages given in the problem on your diagram.
B. What is the throughput in patients per hour of each stage in this process? Be sure to show all your calculations clearly!
C. What are the labor utilization rates for the MD, NP, PA, BC, RRC and the RC? Are these values reasonable for this type of process? If not, how might you redesign and change the process to improve it? Where is the worst bottleneck in the this process?