International journal of health care quality assurance
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Int J Health Care Qual Assur · Jan 1996
A priority queuing model to reduce waiting times in emergency care.
Investigates the increased waiting time costs imposed on society due to inappropriate use of the emergency department by patients, seeking non-emergency or primary care. Proposes a simple economic model to illustrate the effect of this misuse at a public or not-for-profit hospital. Provides evidence that non-emergency patients contribute to lengthy delays in the ER for all classes of patients. Proposes a priority queuing model to reduce average waiting times.
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Hospitals provide the same type of service, but they do not all provide the same quality of service. No one knows this better than patients. Reports the results of a market research exercise initiated to ascertain the different factors which patients of health care identify as being necessary to provide error-free service quality in the NHS hospitals. ⋯ This technique compares expectations with perceptions of service received across five broad dimensions of service quality, namely: tangibility; reliability; responsiveness; assurance; and empathy. This analysis covered 174 patients who had completed the SERVQUAL questionnaire, including patients who had had treatment in surgical, orthopaedic, spinal injury, medicinal, dental and other specialties in the West Midlands region. Recorded the average weighted NHS service quality score overall for the five dimensions as significantly negative.