Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Our Public Health Equation


Q=Quality/speed of service
MD=Staffs available, in this context, MD
t=Time available
P=Patient load

Well, let's do some maths then.

I was recently approached by a patient who relentlessly complained to me about his unacceptably lengthy waiting time. Our follow-up clinic has always been fully booked and occupied, partly owing to the fact that we are the only cardiac referral centre in the whole region.

Mr F's waiting time was, effectively, 48mins, running a bit short of an hour.

He was the 69th patient in the queue. The total number of patient for the day was 127, and the total number of doctors in the clinic was 8. Let's say one patient takes 15mins, it'd require approximately 2 hours to reach Mr F by right.

I'd said: "Guess we're seeing you too soon."

Our clients (the public) usually cannot appreciate this simple equation of relationship between capability of the system and demand on the system.

You'd need an upgrade on your processor and peripherals (of manpower and resources) if you don't want to wait for your Windows to load a program for too long.

Well, another option is to overclock the system. Be wary though, your motherboard would probably die faster and your processor would suffer premature failure and finally refuse to work if you push it too hard!