GP Office Overload

[Keramane]

So, the sick come in, Register, then head to a GP's Office. They then head for a diagnosis, and come right back to the GP office. Then another diagnosis room, GP Office, and often a 3rd and 4th repeat. I've 7 GP offices and there's a 15 queue at all of them unendingly. People are dying from wait times.

Aside from building 40 GP offices, is there a way to just.. have them run all the tests instead of returning to the GP office every single time? Even with all my docs having General Practice II, they still can't get much of a diagnosis out the gate.

[PolecatEZ]

Try to keep your hospital rep under control. Its easy to overbuild in the beginning hour of the map and trigger a flood of patients that will overwhelm your GPs.

Keeping that in mind, I haven't had any real issues with GPs being overwhelmed.

[Giblets]

Just build 3 or 4 and let them be overwhelmed. what's the problem? just make sure you kick those near death or let them jump the queue.

I have started adding a small Staff only toilet as them sharing the same one slows them down as they sometimes have to queue. It's just a case of changing and your floor plan mid/late game when things get busy. As someone said how you build it at the start with minimal gusts and funds is not aways the best way to keep it later one.

Also, build a proper reception room if you've unlocked it.

[Timrod]

The real problem I've noticed with GPs being overwhelmed is this: you'll have a patient who goes to a GP, gets a 98 or 99% diagnosis, and then immediately runs to a second GP instead of just going for treatment. I kind of wish there was a way to adjust that so that if they're above 95% they go right to treatment, no more diagnosis.

[KenseiOmega]

Another thing that slows down the GP is the metric ton of patients fopping about going to the bathroom and fulfilling other needs. I have a game going right now where at least 6 of the people in my 15 person queue are in the damn bathroom. Mostly the ones at the top of the queue. The game needs to do like the announcer lady says "Go to the loo lose your spot on the queue!". Getting to the point where I'm just gonna start stalking bathrooms and mass sending people home. If they're next on line they need to prioritize actually going to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ office.

[Mr ShoveNstuff]

Had the same prob in Mitton. Had 8 GP's and 4 psy.
Those que's where constantly 10-15. Even with consulants.
All the other rooms where rearely used. Like pharma and de-luxe and clown clinic.
Result in alot of death's and rage quiters.
But i was still able to keep my rep at max and making money.
I had the all bottom building plots and the long east and west building plots filled.
Added 2 more gp's (total of 10) and spread them out.
6 at bottom, 2 left and 2 right in the long plots. But still que's 10-15 on the gp's and psy.
Think this came because my hospital was leveling up in stars attracting even more patients.
The north corner plots i've filled with research and training.
When i had enough money i just had it with the long que's on the gp's and psy's.
Both the the long north long building plot and did build 8 more gp's and 4 psy's in it.
So now i have 18 gp's and 8 psy's. :D It helped, no more que's then 0-3 patients at gp and psy.
Only thing now is that i had to hire alot of new untrained doctors resulting that my
general diag is queing at 10-15 now (having 2).But i think when my doctors are trained enough
it will lower those que's eventualy. Lowering the que's also results in minnor death's and rage quiters and happier patients.

Had toilet issue to. Did build a couple more with 4-6 toilets (having 6 in total around the hospital). That solved the toilet overrun prob.
Make sure they can wash their hands and put enough hand sanitisers to keep the patients hygienic. If they are full of germs they get a -10% speed penalty.

[Ruges]

At the university now, but from what I am seeing, Putting the GP's offices in the center front area along with reception. a bathroom (usualy 6 toilets 3 sinks 3 blowers) and a staff room. along with enough entertainment. To one side I build all of the nurses stations. to the other side I build all of the doctor stations. Once I got more then 1 building away I built a 2nd bathroom and staff room. I also place 1-2 benches infront of each room. Basically making it so patients and doctors never wonder far from where they will need to be. And since patients travel from GP to station to GP to station. having it in a central location works well.

[Avs]

I am watching a streamer play and they centralized everything, put the GP offices next to all the diag, had general practice level 4 on all his GP docs, had level 3 diag on his nurses...still 15 person queues. Even with a rep of 0, the hospital had some 150-200 patients at all times.

Basically this game doesn't really give you the space to perfectly and efficiently design the hospital (I assume the devs just want the map layout to be part of the challenge), but you also need all the advanced diagnosis stuff too. And the fact that patient scaling seems to tie with the amount of rooms you have, you're flooded as soon as you try to compensate with more GP offices and diag rooms.

Its kind of like an unsolvable problem even though you know exactly what you need and how to solve it.

Even with GP offices directly opposite of all the diagnosis (you won't have room in most maps to even do this properly), you still need toilets (enough for a ton of people eventually) and enough space for feeding everyone in the central area (where there's constantly 100 people running around). And you hope you have enough hallway space or that will slow down the flow a lot.

[gachi is manly]

Escrito originalmente por Timrod:

The real problem I've noticed with GPs being overwhelmed is this: you'll have a patient who goes to a GP, gets a 98 or 99% diagnosis, and then immediately runs to a second GP instead of just going for treatment. I kind of wish there was a way to adjust that so that if they're above 95% they go right to treatment, no more diagnosis.

You can do this manually by pulling up the patients tab and sending anyone above 90% diagnosis for treatment yourself, but it's honestly pretty tedious and it would be nice if anyone above 95% just automatically went for treatment.

Escrito originalmente por KenseiOmega:

Another thing that slows down the GP is the metric ton of patients fopping about going to the bathroom and fulfilling other needs. I have a game going right now where at least 6 of the people in my 15 person queue are in the damn bathroom. Mostly the ones at the top of the queue. The game needs to do like the announcer lady says "Go to the loo lose your spot on the queue!". Getting to the point where I'm just gonna start stalking bathrooms and mass sending people home. If they're next on line they need to prioritize actually going to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ office.

This + the above problem I quoted seem to be the two biggest culprits for the GP office meltdowns.

Also the fact that, other than manually sending droves of people home, it can be hard to lower reputation to stop yourself from being overwhelmed. A hospital cap or even a button to turn off reception for a bit would be nice. Having some way to lower reputation other than failing emergencies would be nice, too. Raising costs just seems to make patients unhappy rather than lowering hospital reputation like it says it does.

[Desogames]

After playing for around 22 hours and bankrupting Flemmington once i'm starting to manage. Thanks to a few tips too from the discussion forums and some self made discoveries. Long post incoming but i promise it will help *alot*.

First off, what everybody is struggling with: Toilets currently (have to be) are bugged. After some testing it seems the game considers anybody inside the toilet room to be "performing an action". As in, it'd be the same as them opening a door, or using a machine in a room, basically an animation that needs to play out. You'll notice you can send people to get treatment under 100% diagnosis BUT if that person is in the toilet room, even if they're walking towards the toilet, you do NOT get that option. I assume this is also why they're not getting dropped from the queue. Even after washing and drying their hands, the treatment option is not available until the very moment they step outside the room.

Anyways some tips to reduce the queues in GPs:

1. Start thinking in diagnosis buildings. Put all your diagnose stuff in the same building. Starting to overflow? Buy a new building, also with just diagnosis stuff. At the start just take the 2 loans and straight up buy another building for all the cure rooms (except for psychiatry and wards, consider those diagnosis even though they can cure). With 4 GPs i hit the 1 star mark with only upto 6 in the queue.

2. Build MASSIVE toilet rooms in your diagnosis buildings. This is the only way to prevent patients from running all over the place. If all your toilets are in use they *will* run to the other side of the world to find a free one. i had ~8 toilets in my main building on my bankrupted run, i've now got ~14, with 4 sinks and 4 hand dryers, making sure those don't bottleneck. The room basically takes up the entire middle space of the first building in Flemmington. Also make sure to put sinks and the handdryers near the door, so patients dont bump into eachother waiting for the hand dryer and going to the toilet, a 4 wide toilet helps with this as well, having a wide corridor in the middle and all. The cure building can have smaller toilets.

3. Clear the patient list manually on a regular basis. You can send anybody above 50% diagnosis to get treatment. Ofcourse under 100% that decreases the chance of curing, you'll have to experiment with what you're comfortable with. Personally i send everybody with 80% or more straight to treatment. There *should* be a slider to do this automatically, but there isn't yet so unfortunatly you have to do it manually.

4. Assign Doctors to jobs. Aside from Mitton university, you'll probably get a Dr or 2 with good GP stats right off the bat (minimum GP I and diagnosis I skill). You want that person to do Only GP. Simultainiously you'll want a few doctors with Treatment I/II to work in cure rooms exclusively.

5. And ofcourse, train your doctors as much as you can, especially the GP ones, and as early on the map as you can as it will impact the queues less.

6. Pathing is... bad right now, and patients will bump into eachother, and even grind against eachother until they slowly push eachother to the side. You should stick to 2 roomblocks in corridor size for now or 4 of the small blocks you can see on the grid. This will allow you to place stuff like benches in the corridor. 1 Roomblock corridors are possible, but nothing should be in them and ONLY to rooms far from the building entrances. Any main walking path that could also be used to go to other buildings, 2 roomblock spaces minimum.

7. As an addendum to the above, if you do have a 1 roomblock corridor leading to 2-3 far away rooms, you need to make a waiting area at the start of it with food, drinks and entertainment so they don't start wandering down that corridor except for appointments.

8. Unlock the Gold Star Certificate for 200 kudosh ASAP. It gives TRIPLE normal prestige, meaning it gives as much prestige as 3 canvas paintings! At ~15% the space AND it's thinner with no footstep room or whatever so it can fit in places normal posters wont. You can bump a 3x3 room to level 5 prestige with just those certificates alone. Which means no decorative items, which means you can plop down items that give bonusses. In every GP room i have i have atleast 5 medicine cabinets for +5% diagnosis (and treatment so its usefull for say a pharmacy too). And it would be more if i didn't have a coffee machine, sweets dispenser, drinking fountain, big bin and a radiator in there as well.

9. Avoid using the Cafe for now, or make it staff only. The patients are idiots and even if they're dying, they will fullfill their other needs first. I've personally watched a patient who was thirsty and bored who got called into the ward to be cured, walk past leaflets then TURN BACK, to satisfy boredom. Then walk towards the ward and turn around AGAIN for a drinking fountain, then sprint to the ward because he was nearly dead. Now imagine a Cafe that gives food, water and entertainment. They'll never leave, litteraly.

Some extra tips: it took me a while to find it but on certain rooms, most usefully Wards, you can add extra staff to the rooms. Select the room by clicking on it, then there's a counter under the box with people working the room that's called Extra staff. Make sure to build an extra screen and nurse's station though. Having made a mega ward/fracture ward and assigning 2 nurses to each hasn't yielded a queue yet.

Also, if you want to free up janitors, you don't need plants. Anywhere. Plants use the same beauty system as posters so just put posters everywhere in your corridors. Same goes for rooms plastered in posters/gold star certificates. Which btw you can put ontop of windows or behind many objects with no problems.

Finally, a dirty lil tip i found out recently: Wanna prevent people from dying? go to your patient list, pick every patient who looks like he's about to die.....and send him home. They don't seem to die once they're "sent home" even if they're still in the building. I'm not sure about the negative effects though, but i'd be willing to bet it's less then a death and a spooky ghost.

As for the diagnosis buildings ratios, i like to have 2 GPs and 1 of each other diagnosis room. So in the first building in flemmington on the sides i've got 4 GP's, 2 GD's, 2 cardio, and 2 psychiatrists. As stated the middle room is just a giant toilet room, though i might've overdone that a lil bit. I bought the 2nd building off the bat to build a mega ward, which is still close enough to the diagnosis rooms to work. My cure building is off the the side and not even filled up yet, even though i've filled up 2 diagnosis buildings and am about the fill up the 3rd.

Last thing i built where 2 Xray rooms and that seems to have triggered something cause they're filled up with 12+ queues each and the GP's nearby have swelled to 9+ as well. So next building is going to be heavy on the xrays and GPs.

I hope all of this helps somebody. Even so they're just work arounds and the game Definitly needs some improvements in this area. Though if they fix the toilets and add in a slider to automatically send patients to treatment above a certain percentage, that alone will go a long way.

[Keramane]

Flemmington's biggest issue is how far apart and poorly pathed the buildings are. There are no side exits from the main structure, just front and back, and long walkways in the cold, which makes them die faster. Having them leave the building is real bad for them, and with the chopper pads and roads both bringing people in, there are reception difficulties for sure, and hallway congestion.

Oh, and my save died so that happened too :|

Starting over, I haven't had a chance to check the fixes, because the pathing broke when I moved my reception room as a whole by 1 tile. All staff and patients could no longer find their destinations.

[Nak'Dandy]

Those who haven't reach at least Smogley, stop saying you don't have problem in GP's.
Early game doesn't have GP's problem because of simple illness the patients have.

In Smogley I started to think the GP's is so broken I stopped playing. This is the starting map where everything could go crazy without you knowing it.

I restarted the map several times because of bankruptcy (made big money at first, then the hospital was so crowded with GPs patient, it eventually shutted down), but learnt several new things along the way, and accomplished the map with 0 queue in GPs.

At the end of three star accomplishment, here're what my hospital has:
- Four GPs office with only 0-1 queue, 1 of these rooms is staffed with five-star GP's consultant.
I can cut the GP's office number to one/two rooms if I want and can still do fine
- Diagnostic rooms: 2 MegaScan, 1 X-Ray, 1 Fluid
- 1 Ward, 1 Fracture ward (2 nurses with good Ward Management skill for each ward).
- Two small toilet rooms (each for female and male patients)
- One very small toilet room for staff only
- Three surgery rooms
, and 2 million money.

So here's the tips of overloaded GPs:
- It's normal at first to have 10-18 queues at two GP's office. This is because of your junior doctor / consultant can only do so much to fill the diagnostic gauge bar.
Five-star GP's consultant can one-shot the patient with 100% diagnostic accuracy so your goal will be to TRAIN your doctor to higher GP's level ASAP they're promoted.
- Start with basic diagnostic room like cardiology or general diagnostic, then REPLACE it with advance diagnostic room along the way: X-ray, Fluid and MegaScan. These rooms should be staffed with good Diagnostic-skill doctor/nurse.
- Canteen should be prioritized for staff at first. Provide patient with luxurious vending machine. When your GP's queue has been 'normalized', you can open it again for public
- Research everything you need in your previous hospital. This is because research progress is persistent and carry forwarded to the next map. I researched the MegaScan II and X-Ray II beforehand to achieve higher diagnostic rate.
- At first you'll do micro-management like sending the patient directly for treatment in exchange for quick cash and lowering the queues.

So that's it. No queue numbers in every rooms. And I still has so many empty building space.

[Keramane]

I'll be honest, I hadn't considered replacing the diags. I JUST got access to the Mega and XRay however, so yeh.

[Kralore]

I've discovered a small trick that may help relieve some of the pressure on GP queues.

Push the break time on your Assistant/Receptionist to the max 30 days. You will get a long queue line at reception but it will give the GP's some time to clear the lines there. And at rank 2 or 3 of customer service they tend to get through the reception queue in fairly quick time.

[Nneu]

I had to build like 14 GP offices to keep the queues under 6, but once I trained all the doctors to 5 star with GP IV I had no more issues. When your staff is untrained the queues sucks, but eventually you will be diagnosing 100% almost every time and no longer have issues.

[STL]

Escrito originalmente por Ghostlight:

If the person at the head of a queue is off getting something, they should immediately be demoted to 2nd place to keep the queue moving. The fact the game requires the player to do this manually and and if you don't it allows the queue to hang till they come back, is unforgivable in this type of game.

One of the massive issues!!! And hence, never do the fking cafe.
Other issues are like patients loss way on an empty ground / not moving for no reason......

My recent level is keep looking at 11 GPO with tenX patients queueing and noticing they are not getting in the room. Loads of them and money dropping.

It is no use to build more GPO, how close and many of toilets/drinks&eats/diagnosis/wide corridors, useless, believe me.

I halt playing the game unless fixing those bugs and rebalancing.