Use Little's Law to diagnose whether a radiology backlog problem is driven by arrivals, throughput, or work in process.
Queues are conversations in numbers. Before asking people to go faster, locate where work is sitting. Work in process WIP is the number of studies, patients, authorizations, or reports currently inside the system. In radiology, WIP might be patients checked in but not scanned, exams completed but unread, claims submitted but unpaid, or orders waiting for clarification. Throughput Throughput is the rate at which work exits the step. It must be measured at the bottleneck, not just at the practice level. A scanner can complete 12 CTs per hour while the protocoling queue clears only 8 per hour. Time in…
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