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Staffing a Centralized Appointment Scheduling Department in Lourdes Hospital

Author

Listed:
  • Saligrama R. Agnihothri

    (School of Management, State University of New York, Binghamton, New York 13902-6000)

  • Patricia F. Taylor

    (Lourdes Hospital, Binghamton, New York 13905)

Abstract

Lourdes Hospital uses a centralized system to schedule appointments by phone for outpatients, inpatients, and other ambulatory services requested by physicians, their staff, hospital personnel, and patients. Customer surveys and an increase in customer complaints revealed lengthy delays in answering telephone calls. We used a queuing model to find the optimal staffing levels to handle the variation in call arrivals within a day. The problem was solved by just rearranging the work shifts, without adding any staff. We also provide an easy-to-reference generalized queuing table to aid others in deciding staffing levels where M/M/c approximation is appropriate.

Suggested Citation

  • Saligrama R. Agnihothri & Patricia F. Taylor, 1991. "Staffing a Centralized Appointment Scheduling Department in Lourdes Hospital," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 21(5), pages 1-11, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:21:y:1991:i:5:p:1-11
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.21.5.1
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Duder, John C. & Rosenwein, Moshe B., 2001. "Towards "zero abandonments" in call center performance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 50-56, November.
    2. Schwarz, Justus Arne & Selinka, Gregor & Stolletz, Raik, 2016. "Performance analysis of time-dependent queueing systems: Survey and classification," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 170-189.
    3. Aksin, O. Zeynep & Harker, Patrick T., 2003. "Capacity sizing in the presence of a common shared resource: Dimensioning an inbound call center," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 464-483, June.
    4. Ernst, A. T. & Jiang, H. & Krishnamoorthy, M. & Sier, D., 2004. "Staff scheduling and rostering: A review of applications, methods and models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(1), pages 3-27, February.
    5. Defraeye, Mieke & Van Nieuwenhuyse, Inneke, 2016. "Staffing and scheduling under nonstationary demand for service: A literature review," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 4-25.
    6. Castillo, Ignacio & Joro, Tarja & Li, Yong Yue, 2009. "Workforce scheduling with multiple objectives," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(1), pages 162-170, July.
    7. Li, Yanfeng & Xiang, Ting & Szeto, Wai Yuen, 2021. "Home health care routing and scheduling problem with the consideration of outpatient services," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    8. Brusco, Michael J. & Jacobs, Larry W., 1995. "Cost analysis of alternative formulations for personnel scheduling in continuously operating organizations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 249-261, October.

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