Quality of health care is of concern to everybody and the perception of quality is impacted
by the timeliness of care as well as quality and efficiency of the facility and staff. The
Pediatric Orthopaedic clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario is facing a
problem that plagues many health care institutions today – over-burdened staff, lack of
sufficient diagnostic equipment, budget cuts, irate patients who would gladly pay more for
faster care. A close analysis of the typical service and wait times for the patients of the
clinic shows that the wait time can be significantly reduced by adding resources to the
Radiology department with exclusive access to the clinic on certain days, having the 4th
RN share the tasks of the other three RNs and better utilizing the time of the Senior
Resident accompanying the surgeon.
Capacity Analysis and variability
A detailed analysis of utilization of resources for every activity is found in Exhibit A and
has further been grouped to show utilization of staff in Exhibit B. It is evident that the
Surgeon and the three RNs are over-utilized and any Radiology department is close to full
capacity assuming two-thirds of its time is available to the clinic.
Should the Radiology department see a greater influx of patients from the Emergency
room, the capacity available to the clinic will further shrink and create a bottleneck.
Considering 90% of the patients visiting the clinic need an X-ray early in the process, this
will impact all downstream tasks. While adding an X-ray machine and increasing staffing
