How many GP offices and doctors?

[regeneration64]

There's a lot of talk on and off the forums about GP offices not working properly and the queues being too long for these rooms. Some people are saying that they are working as intended and others are saying that it is a bug etc etc.

I have experienced the long queues but also managed to contain them somewhat through careful planning and management. Not perfectly, but things are relatively manageable after the first couple of years. Personally (don't all shout at once!) I feel that things are, in the main, working as intended albeit this is one of the more challenging areas of the game to deal with.

The 'patient cycle' (when working properly) is reception > GP office > diagnosis room > GP office > treatment. The patient will take further trips to diagnosis rooms and then back to the GP office if diagnosis is not 100%. I think that is pretty well established and makes sense.

I find that the best way to manage the flurry of patients into the GP office is threefold:

1. See how many patients are in the hospital, comparing with the queue length, their health and how long they have been in the hospital.
2. Have a sufficient amount of GP offices.
3. Have a sufficient amount of suitably qualified GPs, with extra staff able to cover breaks and training sessions.

Numbers-wise, I am finding that around 6-7 GP offices and 8-9 GPs per 100 patients is around the sweetspot.

Without getting into too much of a debate about queues being out of control which has been covered to death in other threads; what numbers are the community finding works well?

[Anders]

Thats sounds about right :)

I would say 4-6 offices. In that case I have 2 extra doctors on call as you also describe. But with 6-8 you're secure in making them go through fast and I keep no extra doctors.

(Thou, as you know - if your number 4 on your list is not great diagnostic rooms that number will grow really really fast)

[kezza596]

I'm on Grockle Bay and I have 15 GP offices which I make sure are fully staffed 95% of the time (AI seems a bit laggy on assigning a spare doctor when one goeso n break) and I still have queues of 10+ all the time.

This is my 4th attempt at this level and I just can't 3 star it. The queues everywhere else are manageable, but I have people dying and rage quitting while waiting for GP appointments. It's nuts.

I don't know what could possibly be done about it but I feel like my hospitals all end up about 60% JUST in GP offices.

[Evilsod]

I typically end up with 6-8 GP offices and maybe maybe 33% surplus GPs to handle breaks.

My Rotting Hill hospital atm is very much stable on 8 GPs but naturally the only thing screwing me out of stars is Staff Morale (shock horror) because its stupidly hard to increase past about 70% without throwing money at people.

I may increase it to 10 GPs because I need to expand a few treatment facilities which will inevitably increase the number of patients., my Psychiatrists are getting totally spammed with patients and 2 isn't enough.

[snuggleform]

You are not totally correct about the patient cycle. If the GP's visit takes the patient to above 90%, then they are automatically sent to treatment, even if it's not 100%. If not, then the patient is sent to a secondary diagnostic test. But you are mostly correct.

Also, I would argue your point number 3 is mostly moot. I manage queues fine with only two doctors who have any GP training out of like 40 doctors at rank 25+ hospitals. I think the vast majority of opinions I've seen about training seem to emphasize the importance of diagnostic training (getting fully specced GP aces). I honestly think it's highly, highly overrated, based on testing with "generalists" who have zero GP training and are instead just trained to have a wide variety of skills like psych surgery radiology bedside manners. I manage the queues just fine.Your point about having extra staff is a solid one. Having unmanned GP offices when queues are building only negatively affects your patient flow. Even untrained doctors, or mixed bag doctors are much better than letting the queue build up.

Even if I were to agree with point number 3, I have no idea what "suitably qualified GPs" means. What do you consider suitably qualified?

I like the idea of your quantization of a gp to patient density ratio, but there is one major factor that confounds such generalizations: illness distribution. For sake of example, if every patient is a pharmacy patient, you may find you need less GP offices since they are vastly diagnosed in one shot, whereas if you have high fracture/surgery count like on smogley, then you may find you need more GPs relative to the pharmacy situation.

So what illness distribution is your ratio coming from? What level of training for your GPs?

I'll go take a look at my most recent smogley and croquembouche files to see what kind of numbers I have.

edit: ok looking at my file,

Smogley: 163 patients on the map, with 15 GP offices. The queues on the GPs are extremely low, maximum is 3, and some of them have 1,,,and a couple are empty. I let literally every doctor on my squad run GPs if they feel like it, because all of them can also run surgery, megascanners, and psych rooms. I have 31 doctors, all are busy or on break.

Croquembouche: 270 patients on the map, with 31 GP offices. Queues are also low, with many rooms actually not being used. 59 doctors, with only 1 who is looking for work.

Also, my "thought process" to solve GP queues is simply:

Wherever queues are building up, respond to it by building more of that room and having enough staff to man it.

The rule is simple, but here are some examples:

a) I see gp queues go up, I build more gp rooms. This alone may not solve, so keep checking other rooms at the same time
b) I see scanners overloaded, build more scanners
c) I see lines behind vending machines -> build more in the local vicinity
d) I see lines in toilets, make toilets in every plot

I find that as long as you organically respond to queues in every room and just overall make sure patients aren't getting stuck anywhere, GP queues sort themselves out.

[unptitjoueur]

Hello ,
the number of doctors and GP offices depends mainly on where you are.
for me it works very well because I also divide as the author of this post.
for example, I am known MITTON UNIVERSITY and that is how it is distributed:

in total there are 8 buildings (counting the entrance).

1 - building entrance only generalist offices entrance only generalist offices (10)
2 - diagnostic building (cardiology, general diagnosis, fluid analysis) 6 general practitioners
3 - diagnostic building (scanner, radiology) 4 GP offices
4 - diagnostic / treatment building (common ward, psychiatry) 4 GP offices
5 - doctor treatment building
6 - Nursing treatment building
7 - building training and research
8 - staff building

in each building I have toilets on each side separated between men and women, and distributors everywhere.
all my staff is doubled, trained to 5 stars, and assigned each one to a specific post.

and everything works great for me. I have no queue of more than 4 or 5 patients / offices.
so yes it blocks at the beginning of each table because the flow of patients and too strong from the beginning, but once organized and trained staff, it runs perfectly.

[Giblets]

I will only have 4 GPS office, they they get a queue of 15 then tough, don't care anymore. i have't lost a level yet and i just let them get on with it. I might send loads to people home just to ease it up but i don't attempt to solve it anymore, because it can't be solved.

[Freiya]

The required number of GP offices depends on so many factors that it's hard to have a hard rule. It depends on the number of patients, the illnesses of the region, the number of medical cabinets, the doctor's skills, etc...

You probably need 1 GP every 10 to 25 patients that are in the hospital depending on the efficiency of the GP office.

For example at Croquembouche, I had 6 mega GP offices (that could 100% diagnose almost all illnesses) + 4 smaller GP offices. It could just barely manage 250 patients with queues of around 6 patients.

[Anders]

Originally posted by Freiya:

The required number of GP offices depends on so many factors that it's hard to have a hard rule. It depends on the number of patients, the illnesses of the region, the number of medical cabinets, the doctor's skills, etc...

You probably need 1 GP every 10 to 25 patients that are in the hospital depending on the efficiency of the GP office.

For example at Croquembouche, I had 6 mega GP offices (that could 100% diagnose almost all illnesses) + 4 smaller GP offices. It could just barely manage 250 patients with queues of around 6 patients.

I'm experimenting with Croquembouche, do you have a screenshot of that layout?

[Woody]

I have not had more than 10 so far. Just finished Duckworth.

I got long queues on most maps at one point. Once I got training, promotions and upgrades done the queues never were longer than around 6.

It is really important to place enough stuff to meet patient needs close to GP offices.

IMHO multiple smaller restrooms are better than one large one. That way you can spread them out and shorten travel times.

I make sure I got enough vending machines near Gp offices so that queues for them are no lnger than 2 patients.

If I put in a news agent or gift shop I make sure it is near GP offices. If I see the lines get too long and have no room to place more I delete them and add more magazine racks, phones and game machines.

So far I have only built one cafe for hospitals. I set it for staff only. I had too many patients wandering off too far to goto it. I also rather use that space for another room and find the vending machines have been adequate.

With proper planning I find queues very manageable.

[Ishau]

I have never used more than 5 GP offices on a map, but I also don't give my paitents access to anything. Toilets and cafe are set to staff only and all vending machines are within staff rooms.

They are in and out of the hospital extremely quickly so it is rare anyone rage quits.

I dislike that I need to play this way, but adding items literally doubles the number of GPs required.

[Anders]

Does anyone in this thread have experience with Hospitals level 30+ ?

[COVID-19]

When queues get big, I check through the patients in queues to triage them:
- if his diagnosis bar is pretty full (80%+ ish) then just send to treatment
- if low health and low diag bar, send home (since the chance of him living long enough to pay me much is low)
- then reorder the remainder by health, lowest first

[Ishau]

Originally posted by Anders:

Does anyone in this thread have experience with Hospitals level 30+ ?

What level in this game requires a level 30 hospital in any of the star requirements?

If people want to go for level 30 hospitals by spamming stuff everywhere, sure go ahead, but all you are doing is gimping yourself.

[Anders]

Yesus dude, why the anger?

I did all Hospitals with 4-6 GPs, and around level 15. Now I'm playing around with Croquembouche - after 3stars. You know, because its a game, for fun. See how far it can be pushed.

This thread has a couple of the good players of this game that goes high-level, thats why.

[Freiya]

Here is my ugly Croquembouche hospital (it's level 29 with an empty building, so I could probably get it to 30):
https://imgur.com/a/QgeztNt

Note that it was the result of an experiment to see if I could fully diagnose all illnesses with huge GP offices and to see if it could run efficiently with entire buildings dedicated to GPs. I got 3 star with it and I confirm even Midas Touch and Spontaneous Combustion can be 100% diagnosed by those big GPs.

I have an entire building dedicated to training (to have the duration take around 4 days only). The cure rooms are in other buildings around. Note that the only diagnosis rooms apart from the GPs I have are those that can cure too: ward, psychiatry and DNA Lab.

Note that the layout is not optimal at all even for a mega GP "strategy".
GPs and receptions shouldn't be located in the center but in the 8 peripheral buildings since patients come from all around the hospital. Cure rooms and training room(s) should be in 2 or 3 buildings in the center instead. And even the GPs in the biggest buildings around the center should be divided in 2 to reduce queues. Once a happy and energized doctor has the GP5 skill, it's a waste of space (and money but it's not really an issue...) to have 500+ cabinets. :p