Improving Patient Flow in LBUCC’s Obstetrics
Client: Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic
Team: Shorjoe Bhattacharya and Harvey Hauw
Faculty Advisors: Drs. Barr, Bing Year: 2017
Documents: Presentation, Report
Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic, located in West Dallas, offers services in many different healthcare areas including pediatric care, behavioral health, and obstetrics. The focus of this project was in the obstetrics department, at which patient satisfaction was dropping due to long wait times leading to long appointment durations.
Our team was tasked with collecting time and motion data, mapping out current workflows of the clinic, running a simulation model, and analyzing the results. We collected data with a simple yet effective time and motion study where we asked the individual patients to log their times as they went station to station in the clinic. We also learned the workflows and layout of the clinic by talking to staff members at the location. This was data was used in a computer simulation model of the Obstetrics wing, developed using “MedModel” (specialty healthcare facilities simulation software). The simulation results revealed ways to reduce patient wait times to improve the patient experience at LBUCC.