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A cost-effective urgent care policy to improve patient access in a dynamic scheduled clinic setting

Author

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  • Yu-Li Huang

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA)

  • Paulina Zuniga

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA)

  • Justin Marcak

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA)

Abstract

Patient no-show in outpatient clinics has been a long recognized issue, which negatively impacts clinic operational efficiency in terms of costs and patient access to care. One way to reduce these negative impacts is to allow urgent walk-ins during a clinic day. Some clinics allow random walk-ins and some purposely leave open time slots to accommodate them. The objective of this paper is to develop a cost-effective urgent care policy that is added on top of a full schedule and takes into account scheduled patients’ no-show rates to improve patient access to care in a dynamic clinic environment. The findings indicate that the proposed approach outperforms the current random and urgent slot approaches. This paper demonstrates a dynamic approach for accommodating urgent patients into a patient scheduling system, based on the prediction of an individual patient's no-show probability and the maximum number of urgent patients allowed.

Suggested Citation

  • Yu-Li Huang & Paulina Zuniga & Justin Marcak, 2014. "A cost-effective urgent care policy to improve patient access in a dynamic scheduled clinic setting," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 65(5), pages 763-776, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:65:y:2014:i:5:p:763-776
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    Cited by:

    1. Tugba Cayirli & Kum Khiong Yang, 2019. "Altering the Environment to Improve Appointment System Performance," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 138-154, June.
    2. Murtaza Nasir & Nichalin Summerfield & Ali Dag & Asil Oztekin, 2020. "A service analytic approach to studying patient no-shows," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 14(2), pages 287-313, June.

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