Authors: Mahmoud Barghash, Hanan Saleet
Journal: International journal of health care quality assurance
Volume: 31
Issue: 4
Pages: 309-326
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Abstract:
Purpose
High lateness and no-show percentages pose great challenges on the patient scheduling process. Usually this is addressed by optimizing the time between patients in the scheduling process and the percent of extra patients scheduled to account for absent patients. However, since the patient no-show and lateness is highly stochastic we might end up with many patients showing up on time which leads to crowded clinics and high waiting times. The clinic might end up as well with low utilization of the doctor time. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of scheduled overload percentages and the patient interval on the waiting time, overtime, and the utilization.