ORAHS2024
Abstract Submission

287. Patient-oriented scheduling policies in surgery pre-admission testing clinics

Contributed abstract in session MC-5: (Multi)Appointment /1, stream Regular talks.

Monday, 11:00-12:30
Room: Room S6

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Paola Cappanera
Dipartimento di Sistemi e Informatica, University of Florence
2. Maddalena Nonato
EndIF, Universita' di Ferrara
3. Sal Agnihothri
School of Management, Binghamton University
4. Filippo Visintin
Department of Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Firenze

Abstract

Pre-admission testing clinics are care units serving outpatients before surgical operation and performing procedure-specific tests to assess eligibility. Patients may need multiple tests, each performed by a specialized operator and delivered in any order. This study considers a patient-oriented service model in which a patient occupies an exam room until all the required tests are completed, and tests are administered by different operators inside the rooms sequentially, in any order. Thus, patients stay inside the assigned room while operators move between rooms. This service model has recently gained momentum as an alternative to the traditional service organization where each ambulatory room is assigned to an operator and patients move between rooms. However, in this new service model, rooms become bottleneck resources and their utilization needs to be optimized to increase system throughput and reduce patient waiting time. The advantages and disadvantages of this service model are discussed from the perspective of both the patient and the provider. While there is no doubt that careful scheduling of patient appointments is essential in running clinics, the adopted scheduling policy can significantly affect stakeholders' perceptions of the service. We thus propose and compare optimization-based offline policies and commonly used online policies in a variety of scenarios based on realistic data.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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