Women’s College Hospital Uses Operations Research to Create an Ambulatory Clinic Schedule

Brendan K. Eagen (), Timothy C. Y. Chan () and Michael W. Carter ()
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Brendan K. Eagen: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada
Timothy C. Y. Chan: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada
Michael W. Carter: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada

Service Science, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 230-240

Abstract: Women’s College Hospital (WCH) in Toronto, Canada, offers roughly 300 outpatient clinics every week. In April 2011, we started working with WCH to design a new schedule for their clinics, to accommodate a move to a new hospital building that was completed in May 2013. We developed an integer programming model to optimize the assignment of clinics to timeslots and locations, based on the desire to minimize changes from the historical schedule. In cooperation with senior leadership, we tested multiple scenarios that explored changes to space utilization policies at WCH and ultimately generated a new clinic schedule, which they implemented in May 2013. In this paper, we highlight the value our work has created for WCH and present the lessons we learned in development of the model and through our collaboration with the WCH team.

Keywords: optimization; integer programming; healthcare; clinic scheduling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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