Unmanageable Reception Queue

[EpicPartyGuy]

Dunno if I'm doing something wrong, but I have 60+ people waiting in queue for Reception, with 3 Assistants (each with Customer Service 3) working in Reception. Mostly the problem is by the time people head to the doctor they're down to ~65% health!

I have a large open area for them to line up in so footpathing isn't the problem.

What can I do to get people processed faster?

[snuggleform]

Screenshot?

I've had situations in the last level where I had to go up to 5 receptionists at the same time. Actually, I'm so far in the level I decided to go with 2 receptionists at each entrance (8 total at the outer entrances) and I still have a central reception desk to catch those people who don't use the outer ones.

If reception queues are an issue, almost always the correct solution is add more receptionist/desks. There isn't any other room or factor that helps with it. Just bite the bullet and do it. Assistants are dirt cheap and even an untrained rank 1 star guy will help the queue significantly. You really don't want any queues at reception, it's one of the easier things to solve.

And of course make sure you actually have enough receptionists working, and not someone on break. Sometimes queues accumulate because someone is training or on a break and you didn't buy a backup.

[mreed2]

Although I've never seen this so extreme, but patients enter the queue for reception when they enter the map. If the reception is palce very distant from where new patients spawn, you can get large reception queues while patients make their way to reception. If this is the problem, the solution is to move the reception desks closer to the spawn points.

If you actually have 60 people standing in line before each of your reception desks, though, I have no solution -- a screenshot would be nice.

[Miravlix]

I don't even have 70 total patients on the entire map with a level 19 Hospital

I accidently started out by creating a 4x4 reception room with 4 seats facing the four doors (was a rather extream change as I've used a single seat reception so far), but maybe it avoided the quqing problems.

Queing is basically evil, the more the queue grows, the worse it works, but you might be able to clean it up, by closing all toilets to patients, removing benches/food/drink/boredom items. This will result in them not running off to take care of needs and stand in line.

[Nneu]

Start sending some people home so you can get the healthy people back into the front of the line or else you might start spiraling in debt.

Also, customer service supposedly affects reception speed.

[Captain Australia]

Sorry, but do you only have one reception ??

I usually have a major reception and a mini-support desk in each building, and that tends to split the herd up a bit ... but I'm nowhere near endgame - so my remark may not be useful.

In a conventional business people are probably used to thinking of only having one reception, and you're just increasing it's size and adding terminals ...

Having little reception / GP hubs that satellite out into the secondary services is how I'm doing it, and reception queues have never been an issue, but number of GPs is always a major pain in the neck.

[Moro]

wondering which map it is as this really makes a difference. i know when i was playing grockle i tried spreading out reception but no matter what it seemed to no matter for me. the patients always came to the center building at the top of the map. so what i ended up doing was a larger reception room desk in that building with trained assistants. they processed the patients fast and sent them to the various GP offices spread throughout.

[Varstahl]

If you're using the standard desk, how many of them have you placed? And if you're using the room, pretty much the same, how many stations have you placed?

If you have 12-15 GPs you probably will need 4-5 receptionists, but if your hospital has like 4-5 GPs you shouldn't need more than 2 or 3 desks.

[druegan2001]

I just go through the patients list periodically and purge reception. Send em all home. The GP's tend to get overloaded unless you have stupidly insane amounts of them, and don't worry, 30 seconds later another 15 will have shown up out of nowhere..

[Combo]

Sending home is the only thing that seem to help for me. Sometimes I have to manually send more than 50 patients home which is quite frustrating.

[EpicPartyGuy]

https://steamcommunity.com/id/CaptainComrade/screenshot/970978854184004707

[Varstahl]

Well, you're going with 3 stars with max rep, at that point I have 4 up to 7 receptionists, depending on the map. Seems pretty normal.

[ibbipuffs]

I wonder if this is a case of over-prestige.

[Nedrith]

Personally I hate putting reception against a wall. Can't use both sides when you do that.

Looking at the screenshot it looks like you have a lot of issues though. Once you solve the receptionist issues, which will require more receptionists/pods, you'll have a lot of GP issues as you already have a queue in that screenshot. Psychiatry is already having a major backlog as well. At level 19 it feels like you need a lot more majorly balanced hospital.

[Nedrith]

Originally posted by Ibbi Wyxx:

I wonder if this is a case of over-prestige.

Prestige affects hospital level very, very little. I always run at prestige 5 rooms unless I'm too lazy to place the certifercates.

I would say it has a lot to do with design. For example, I can see atleast 3 treatment rooms with the GP. No need for that, atleast not in the main receptionist building. That building should only contain GPs and Diagnosis rooms. You want as short of a distance between diagnosis and GP as patients tend to go back and forth between those rooms.

[ibbipuffs]

The reception queue is still weird. Doesn't prestige affect how many people come to the hospital along with hospital level?