An integrated approach to demand and capacity planning in outpatient clinics

Navid Izady

European Journal of Operational Research, 2019, vol. 279, issue 2, 645-656

Abstract: An outpatient clinic serving two independent demand streams, one representing advance booking requests and the other same-day requests, is considered. Advance requests book their appointments through an electronic booking system for a future day, and same-day requests are served on the day they arise. A compact policy formulation is proposed that incorporates major operational levers suggested in the literature. It combines a slot publication policy, which specifies the pattern under which slots are released to the booking system, with an expediting policy that adjusts the daily workload of advance patients. Relying on a wide range of numerical experiments, a heuristic search method is developed for finding the joint publication and expediting policies, minimizing the cost of overtime slots whilst ensuring a waiting and an access constraint is met. Several managerial insights are derived using a combination of illustrative and real data, highlighting the importance of taking an integrated approach towards the operational levers captured by our policy formulation.

Keywords: OR in health services; Outpatient clinics; Demand and capacity planning; Queues (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:279:y:2019:i:2:p:645-656

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.06.001

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