Service Journal: Question 8 of 15

1. Describe a place in your focal organization's service process where if capacity and demand were better matched, the service could operate with minimal waiting.

The Emergency room coud operate a much more optimal level if demand was know. As most who use emergent services are unpredictable the variation of demand will remain difficult to peg. ER requires a broad range of medical staff inorder to predict the advent of an emergency. Therefore often times ERs employ excess capacity but if any one discipline is overly taxed it will be under staffed. For example they employ many doctors with differing specialties not many doctors with the same specialty.

2. Are there ways that demand and capacity could be kept more "in line" with one another?

Seasonality could be used to forecast demand. There are usually more accidents on certain days. There are usually more cases of flu at certain times in the year. Tracking disease prevalence for a certain area may as well help predict demand and better adjust capacity. Hospitals may be found in a location where the population is aging and therefore mix of staff on site would change to match the community needs.

Finally many doctors work on-call. They are off site doing what they want unless there is an unexpected spike in demand, at which time, they are called in to work. Thus capacity is less expensive than staffing directly, but the hospital is still on the hook for paying a small fee for doctors who are on-call.