Application of Queuing Theory in Hospital System: Ante Natal Care Unit Mubi

Ante Natal Care (ANC) is a medication provided to pregnant women after pregnancy. This treatment entails register provision, physical review, doctor’s appointment, pharmacy services, laboratory screening, and general health education. Primary Health Care (PHC) delivers certain services to pregnant women. Area of interest to the researchers was the time spent by women during the ANC. Many women remained in the hospital the entire day and some finally went home unattended. This paper attempts to explore the reasons responsible for the hospital’s waste of time and its potential health consequences for these fragile pregnant women. The researchers have analyzed the waiting time, service time and overall time spent in a queue. The data was analyzed using TORA package and the result reveals an average arrival rate (lambda) of 31.00, service time (Mu) = 5.00 at the Registration/ File retrieval unit; an average arrival rate (Lambda) of 5.00, Mu = 4.00 at the BP, Weight, Temperature check unit; an average arrival rate (Lambda) of 5.00, Mu = 4.00 Consulting with Doctor; an average arrival rate (Lambda) of 4.00 , Mu = 32 at the Health Talk unit and finally average arrival rate (Lambda) of 29.00, Mu = 5.00 at the Pharmacy. This analysis revealed that reasonable amount of time is spent by these women on queue, and service discipline of First in First out (FIFO) is not always observed, the researchers then recommends a modified Single Queue – Multiple – Serial Server for the PHC which increased the service rate and also encouraged support by other staff during the Ante Natal services