Fig. 1

Shown are histograms of patient inter-arrival times (all urgency classes combined); bin width = 20 min. Solid line: actual data from University of California Davis Medical Center for a 1 year period. Dashed line: simulated data (1 year period). Note the similar distribution of times. The slightly greater peak in the actual data is likely due to two or more patients being scheduled <20 min apart even though the decisions to perform surgery for these patients might have been >20 min apart