IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v56y2008i6p1526-1538.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reducing Delays for Medical Appointments: A Queueing Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Linda V. Green

    (Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027)

  • Sergei Savin

    (Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027)

Abstract

Many primary care offices and other medical practices regularly experience long backlogs for appointments. These backlogs are exacerbated by a significant level of last-minute cancellations or “no-shows,” which have the effect of wasting capacity. In this paper, we conceptualize such an appointment system as a single-server queueing system in which customers who are about to enter service have a state-dependent probability of not being served and may rejoin the queue. We derive stationary distributions of the queue size, assuming both deterministic as well as exponential service times, and compare the performance metrics to the results of a simulation of the appointment system. Our results demonstrate the usefulness of the queueing models in providing guidance on identifying patient panel sizes for medical practices that are trying to implement a policy of “advanced access.”

Suggested Citation

  • Linda V. Green & Sergei Savin, 2008. "Reducing Delays for Medical Appointments: A Queueing Approach," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(6), pages 1526-1538, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:56:y:2008:i:6:p:1526-1538
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.1080.0575
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.1080.0575
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.1080.0575?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guido Kaandorp & Ger Koole, 2007. "Optimal outpatient appointment scheduling," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 217-229, September.
    2. Diwakar Gupta & Lei Wang, 2008. "Revenue Management for a Primary-Care Clinic in the Presence of Patient Choice," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 576-592, June.
    3. Yigal Gerchak & Diwakar Gupta & Mordechai Henig, 1996. "Reservation Planning for Elective Surgery Under Uncertain Demand for Emergency Surgery," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 321-334, March.
    4. Refael Hassin & Sharon Mendel, 2008. "Scheduling Arrivals to Queues: A Single-Server Model with No-Shows," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 565-572, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Van-Anh Truong, 2015. "Optimal Advance Scheduling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(7), pages 1584-1597, July.
    2. Wen-Ya Wang & Diwakar Gupta, 2011. "Adaptive Appointment Systems with Patient Preferences," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 373-389, July.
    3. Yu Zhang & Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni, 2017. "Two-day appointment scheduling with patient preferences and geometric arrivals," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 85(1), pages 173-209, February.
    4. Jianzhe Luo & Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni & Serhan Ziya, 2012. "Appointment Scheduling Under Patient No-Shows and Service Interruptions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 670-684, October.
    5. Ahmadi-Javid, Amir & Jalali, Zahra & Klassen, Kenneth J, 2017. "Outpatient appointment systems in healthcare: A review of optimization studies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(1), pages 3-34.
    6. Mehmet A. Begen & Maurice Queyranne, 2011. "Appointment Scheduling with Discrete Random Durations," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 240-257, May.
    7. S. Ayca Erdogan & Brian Denton, 2013. "Dynamic Appointment Scheduling of a Stochastic Server with Uncertain Demand," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 25(1), pages 116-132, February.
    8. Vink, Wouter & Kuiper, Alex & Kemper, Benjamin & Bhulai, Sandjai, 2015. "Optimal appointment scheduling in continuous time: The lag order approximation method," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 213-219.
    9. Miao Bai & Bjorn Berg & Esra Sisikoglu Sir & Mustafa Y. Sir, 2023. "Partially partitioned templating strategies for outpatient specialty practices," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(1), pages 301-318, January.
    10. Shan Wang & Nan Liu & Guohua Wan, 2020. "Managing Appointment-Based Services in the Presence of Walk-in Customers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(2), pages 667-686, February.
    11. Dogru, Ali K. & Melouk, Sharif H., 2019. "Adaptive appointment scheduling for patient-centered medical homes," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 166-181.
    12. Shenghai Zhou & Yichuan Ding & Woonghee Tim Huh & Guohua Wan, 2021. "Constant Job‐Allowance Policies for Appointment Scheduling: Performance Bounds and Numerical Analysis," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(7), pages 2211-2231, July.
    13. Haolin Feng & Yiwu Jia & Siyi Zhou & Hongyi Chen & Teng Huang, 2023. "A Dataset of Service Time and Related Patient Characteristics from an Outpatient Clinic," Data, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-15, February.
    14. Pan, Xingwei & Geng, Na & Xie, Xiaolan, 2021. "Appointment scheduling and real-time sequencing strategies for patient unpunctuality," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 295(1), pages 246-260.
    15. Kemper, Benjamin & Klaassen, Chris A.J. & Mandjes, Michel, 2014. "Optimized appointment scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(1), pages 243-255.
    16. Jonathan Patrick & Martin L. Puterman & Maurice Queyranne, 2008. "Dynamic Multipriority Patient Scheduling for a Diagnostic Resource," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(6), pages 1507-1525, December.
    17. Katsumi Morikawa & Katsuhiko Takahashi & Daisuke Hirotani, 2018. "Performance evaluation of candidate appointment schedules using clearing functions," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 509-518, March.
    18. Li Luo & Ying Zhou & Bernard T. Han & Jialing Li, 2019. "An optimization model to determine appointment scheduling window for an outpatient clinic with patient no-shows," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 68-84, March.
    19. Kuiper, Alex & Mandjes, Michel, 2015. "Appointment scheduling in tandem-type service systems," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 57(PB), pages 145-156.
    20. Gökalp, E. & Gülpınar, N. & Doan, X.V., 2023. "Dynamic surgery management under uncertainty," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 832-844.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:56:y:2008:i:6:p:1526-1538. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.