An emergency room (ER) is currently organized so that, first, all patients are registered through an initial verification process. Once registered, the patient waits for the availability of a doctor for examination. At the end of the examination, the doctor makes one of two decisions: (1) giving a prescription to the patient or (2) entering the hospital. Currently, people arrive at the HSTER with an inter-arrival time of 1.5 minutes. Historically, 18% of patients are admitted to the hospital. On average, 40 patients expect to be registered and 70 expect to see the doctor. The registration process takes, on average, 12 minutes per patient. The average time a patient receives a doctor's prescription is 10 minutes. Among those admitted to the hospital, the average time with the doctor is 50 minutes. (Note: Call this conventional process 'Process 1').
Due to numerous complaints, the emergency room management proposed a new process based on modifications in the system. In this process, patients are recorded in the same way as in Process 1. Immediately after the Registry, an experienced nurse decides whether the patient needs to see the physician for possible admission or provides a prescription; Once the patient receives the prescription, leaves the system. The estimated time with the nurse will be 5 minutes. (Note: Call this conventional process 'Process 2').
In this new system, the administration expects that, on average, 30 patients will be on the waiting line to register and 9 on the waiting line to attend to the nurse. The average time of the patients to be examined by the doctor is 18 minutes. Of the patients examined by the doctor, 80% are admitted; The rest receive a prescription.
Explain if Process 2 is better than Process 1. The explanation has to be given based on (1) the average times of patients in both systems (processes), (2) number of patients estimated in the system, and (3) The percentage of 'utilization' of the receptionist, nurse and doctor. Assume that the processes are in steady state and present diagrams of each process using the classic icons: rectangle = processes, triangles = waiting lines or buffer and arrows = flows.