Chapter 3, Problem 49P

Metropolitan General Hospital is a city-owned and–operated public hospital. Its emergency room is the largest and most prominent in the city. Approximately 70% of emergency cases in the city come or are sent to Metro General’s emergency room. As a result, the emergency room is often crowded and the staff is overworked, causing concern among hospital administrators and city officials about the quality of service and healthcare the emergency room is able to provide. One of the key quality attributes administrators focus on is patient waiting time-that is, the time between when a patient checks in and registers and when the patient first sees an appropriate medical staff member. Hospital administration wants to monitor patient waiting time using statistical process control charts. At different times of the day over a period of several days, patient waiting times were recorded at random with the following results:

1. a. Develop an x-chart to be used in conjunction with an R-chart to monitor patient waiting time and indicate if the process appears to be in control.
2. b. The city has established a requirement that emergency room patients have a waiting time of 25 minutes ±5 minutes. Based on the results in part (a), is the emergency room capable of meeting this requirement with its current process?