[Waiting time for treatment in hospital. How can we measure and regulate the waiting time?]

We discuss different measures of waiting time, as well as the factors that influence the waiting time, the number of patients accumulated on the waiting list, the inflow of patients to the list, the number of patients removed from the list without treatment, and the number of patients removed from the list as treated. We describe a method for continuous registration and surveillance of these factors, and of the waiting time for treated and waiting patients. We also present a mathematical model to describe the relation between these factors. This model has proved to be a useful tool in predicting waiting time and in estimating the treatment capacity required to reach defined goals for waiting time.