Effects of waiting time information on the performance of a two-tier service system

Abstract

The healthcare service in much of the Western world can be modelled as a two-tier service system where one provider charges a premium or “toll” relative to the other service and where the two service providers may provide different levels of information to their customers. We examine how such differential information sharing affects the performance of the systems. We find that “more isn’t always better”; while the sharing of real-time information by the toll service provider is beneficial to both service providers, the sharing by the non-toll or “free” service provider is detrimental not only to the toll service provider but may also, under certain circumstances, harm the free service provider as well.

Keywords:

• Health services
• queuing
• simulation
• statistics
• stochastic processes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.