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The purpose of this paper is to propose a scheduling method called the “Asynchronous Harmonic Broadcasting Considering Commercial (AHB‐CC)” method, to reduce waiting time for continuous media data broadcasting.

The authors analyze and evaluate the performance of the proposed AHB‐CC method.

The authors confirm that the proposed method gives shorter average waiting times than the conventional methods.

A future direction of this study will involve making a scheduling method where the server concurrently broadcasts data and commercial contents. Also, maximum buffer size needs to be considered.

In general broadcasting systems, the server broadcasts the same data repetitively and clients wait until the first portion of the data is broadcast. Although the server can deliver the data to many clients concurrently, clients have to wait until their desired data are broadcast.

The AHB‐CC method presented in the paper further reduces waiting time by scheduling an effective broadcast that considers the playing time of commercial contents.

Waiting time, as an important predictor of queue abandonment and patient satisfaction, is important for resource utilization and patient experience management. Medical institutions have given top priority to reforming the appointment system for many years; however, whether the increased information transparency brought about by the appointment scheduling mechanism could improve patient waiting time is not well understood. In this study, the authors examine the effects of information transparency in reducing patient waiting time from an uncertainty perspective.

Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment in a tertiary academic hospital, the authors analyze over one million observational patient visit records and design the propensity score matching plus the difference in difference (PSM-DID) model and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to address this issue.

The authors confirm that, on average, improved information transparency significantly reduces the waiting time for patients by approximately 6.43 min, a 4.90% reduction. The authors identify three types of uncertainties (resource, process and outcome uncertainty) in the patient visit process that affect patients' waiting time. Moreover, information transparency moderates the relationship between three sources of uncertainties and waiting time.

The authors’ work not only provides important theoretical explanations for the patient-level factors of in-clinic waiting time and the reasons for information technology (IT)-enabled appointment scheduling by time slot (ITASS) to shorten patient waiting time and improve patient experience but also provides potential solutions for further exploration of measures to reduce patient waiting time.

This study investigates the effect of user fees on access and waiting time in Nigeria. For access, the effect of user fees on both preventive and curative care; and the effect of user fees on waiting time at public healthcare facilities were examined. User fees are vital for the fiscal sustainability of healthcare provision for most African economies. Its imposition could debar healthcare access by the poor while its removal can reduce quality of care and induce longer waiting time.

The wave 3 of the Nigerian General Household Survey (2015/16) data was used for users of public health facilities. Access to healthcare was modelled using utilization data in a logistic regression model while waiting time was through the Negative Binomial Regression Model (NBRM).

The analyses showed significant effects of user fees on access to both preventive and curative care and on time spent waiting to make use of healthcare services. Individuals were able to access healthcare services regardless of amounts paid. Also, there was a non-negative effect of user fee imposition on waiting time.

Nigeria should improve healthcare facilities to address the enormous demand for healthcare services when designing policy for health sector.

This paper shows that even with the imposition of user fees, healthcare facilities could still not cater for the rising healthcare needs of the populace but cautioned that its abolition may not be a preferred option.

The purpose of this paper is to explore waiting times in improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) services before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper aims to help develop a better understanding of waiting times in IAPT so that interventions can be developed to address them.

IAPT national data reports was analysed to determine access and in-treatment waiting times before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Time-series data was used to examine referral patterns, waiting list size and waiting times between the period of November 2018 and January 2022. The data covers all regions in England where an IAPT service has been commissioned.

There was a dramatic drop in referrals to IAPT services when lockdown started. Waiting list size for all IAPT services in the country reduced, as did incomplete and completed waits. The reduction in waiting times was short-lived, and longer waits are returning.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on IAPT waiting times both in relation to, and outside of, COVID-19. It is hoped that the conclusions will generate discussion about addressing long waits to treatment for psychological therapy and encourage further research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no published research examining the performance of IAPT waiting times to second appointment. The paper also contributes to an understanding of how IAPT waiting times are measured and explores challenges with the system itself. Finally, it offers an overview on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on waiting time performance nationally.

This is a national study which aims to determine the average waiting time in Malaysian public hospitals and to gauge the level of patient satisfaction with the waiting time. It also aims to identify factors perceived by healthcare providers which contribute to the waiting time problem.

Self‐administered questionnaires were the main method of data collection. Two sets of questionnaires were used. The first set solicited information from patients on their waiting time expereince. The second set elucidated information from hospital employees on the possible causes of lengthy waiting time. The questionnaires were administered in 21 public hospitals throughout all 13 states in Malaysia. A total of 13,000 responses were analysed for the patient survey and almost 3,000 were analysed for the employee survey.

The findings indicate that on average, patients wait for more than two hours from registration to getting the prescription slip, while the contact time with medical personnel is only on average 15 minutes. Employee surveys on factors contributing to the lengthy waiting time indicate employee attitude and work process, heavy workload, management and supervision problems, and inadequate facilities to be among the contributory factors to the waiting time problem.

Public healthcare in Malaysia is in a state of “excess demand”, where demand for subsidised healthcare far outstrips supply, due to the large fee differential between public and private healthcare services. There is a need for hospital managers to reduce the boredom faced by patients while waiting, and to address the waiting time problem in a more scientific manner, as has been carried out in other countries through simulation and modelling techniques.

Healthcare organisations are keen to address their waiting time problem. However, not much research has been carried out in this area. The study thus fills the lacuna in waiting time studies in healthcare organisations.

Waiting lines and delays have become commonplace in service operations. As a result, customer waiting time guarantee is a widely used competition strategy in service industries. To implement waiting time guarantee strategy, managers need to not only know the average of waiting time, but also the variance around average waiting time. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research provides a mathematically exact expression for the coefficient of variation of waiting time for Markov queues. It then applies the concept of isomorphism to approximate the variance of customer waiting time in a general queue. Simulation experiments are conducted to verify the accurate approximations.

A significant feature of the approximation method is that it is mathematically tractable and can be implemented in a spreadsheet format. It provides a practical way to estimate the variance of customer waiting time in practice. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the queuing models in providing guidance on implementing appointment scheduling and waiting time guarantee strategy. Also, the spreadsheet can be used to conduct what-if analysis by inputting different parameters.

This paper develops a simple, easy-to-use spreadsheet model to estimate the standard deviation of waiting time. The approximation requires only the mean and standard deviation or the coefficient of variation of the inter-arrival and service time distributions, and the number of servers. A spreadsheet model is specifically designed to analyze the variance of waiting time.

This paper aims to analyse waiting‐time guarantees in the three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) and to assess whether their current policy designs have strengthened the role of patients in their healthcare systems.

The paper compares official documents and legislation in the three countries. The main findings are that waiting‐time guarantees have generally empowered patients in the Scandinavian health systems. This empowerment is stronger in Denmark and Norway, where formal waiting‐time guarantee rules are applied, than in Sweden, where the guarantee is based on the “softer” regulatory instrument of agreements. While patients are formally empowered in all three countries, and care providers are gradually adjusting to this situation, it is also clear that the practical conditions for empowering patients are not fully in place. The issue of information dissemination is particularly important.

Assessments are based on current regulatory configurations in the three countries, where the process of adapting and implementing the policies is ongoing. These assessments are based on a comparative analysis of the institutional designs. There is no detailed information on how patients use the waiting‐time guarantee.

It is important to consider carefully the information that patients have available in exercising their right to choose healthcare as well as the incentives for providing such information to them.

This is the first systematic comparison of waiting‐time guarantees in the three countries. It is a starting‐point for further research on the introduction of waiting‐time guarantees in public health systems.

The experience of waiting for service is often the first direct interaction between customers and most service delivery processes. The literature on satisfaction with waiting has paralleled the literature on general service satisfaction, in which the relative importance of actual performance, perceived performance, and the disconfirmation between expected performance and perceived performance has been the subject of much debate. This paper presents an empirical study of satisfaction with waiting for service in a fast food environment. The study demonstrates that actual waiting time, perceived waiting time, and the disconfirmation between expected waiting time and perceived waiting time are all related to satisfaction with the waiting experience. It further demonstrates that the relative importance of each of these variables in predicting satisfaction depends on the differences in the needs of the customers. The implications for both theory and practice are significant: the importance of the perception of the experience increases as the importance of the satisfaction measure increases. More specifically, for customers who are concerned about time, the perception of the time spent waiting is a better predictor of satisfaction than the actual waiting time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction based on first impression bias, which explains how customers’ perceived service-entry waiting time (PSWT) influences their first impression of service staff and satisfaction in the context of online service. Furthermore, the moderating effect of three information formats (formal, informal and hybrid) of opening remark on the relationship between PSWT and first impression, and the moderating effect of perceived in-service waiting time (PIWT) on the relationship between first impression and customer satisfaction are investigated.

Two studies were used to verify the research model. First, an experiment on prepurchase consulting services for cruise tourism products was designed, and 810 Chinese individuals have participated. Second, 20 interviews with e-commerce practitioners in China were conducted.

The results show that, first, PSWT negatively influences customers’ first impression of service staff. Second, customers prefer the hybrid format to present opening remarks, which not only conveys the respect of the staff but also fosters a relationship. Third, in-service waits are equally as important as service-entry waits in online service. When PIWT is longer, the positive influence of first impression on customer satisfaction is weakening, resulting in lower customer satisfaction.

This study provides suggestions for online service enterprises to minimize the negative impact of waiting time and improve customer satisfaction through waiting time management.

This study provides a new perspective for exploring the mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction in online service context, and extends previous research related to waiting time by exploring the influence of waiting time in multiple service stages and expression modes of service staff.

The purpose of this study is that service sectors sectors create queues intentionally as a promotional strategy. Potential buyers might become actual customers after witnessing and joining queues. However, the effectiveness of company promotional activities involving queues remains unclear. Despite the innovativeness of this marketing strategy, few companies have adopted this approach, owing to the lack of research on how waiting influences customer behaviors toward waiting in queues.

Therefore, this study identifies four factors of customer willingness to stand in a queue using questionnaire survey: company promotional activities, improvement of waiting environment, company’ reactions to the queue and customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time.

This study identifies causal relationships among the aforementioned factors. The results of this investigation reveal that a company’s promotional activities significantly and indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Analytical results also show that a company’s queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment.

Based on the analytical results concerning causal relationships, improving the waiting environment is critical to affecting positively customers’ perceptions regarding waiting time. Queuing management can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. A company’s promotional activities can indirectly reduce customers’ perceived waiting time by improving the waiting environment. Customers who enjoy both the waiting environment and the promotional activities experience much shorter perceived waiting time.