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Appointment Scheduling Under Patient No-Shows and Service Interruptions

Author

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  • Jianzhe Luo

    (Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599)

  • Vidyadhar G. Kulkarni

    (Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599)

  • Serhan Ziya

    (Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599)

Abstract

We consider an appointment-based service system (e.g., an outpatient clinic) for which appointments need to be scheduled before the service session starts. Patients with scheduled appointments may or may not show up for their appointments. The service of scheduled patients can be interrupted by emergency requests that have a higher priority. We develop a framework that can be utilized in determining the optimal appointment policies under different assumptions regarding rewards, costs, and decision variables. We propose two methods to evaluate the objective function for a given appointment schedule. We specifically consider two different formulations, both of which aim to balance the trade-off between the patient waiting times and server utilization and carry out a numerical study to provide insights into optimal policies. We find that policies that ignore interruptions perform quite badly, especially when the number of appointments to be scheduled is also a decision variable. We also find that policies that require equally spaced appointments perform reasonably well when the interruption rate is constant. However, their performance worsens significantly when the interruption rate is time dependent.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormsom:v:14:y:2012:i:4:p:670-684
    DOI: 10.1287/msom.1120.0394
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    References listed on IDEAS

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