A simulation study of scheduling clinic appointments in surgical care: individual surgeon versus pooled lists

C Vasilakis (), B G Sobolev, L Kuramoto and A R Levy
Additional contact information
C Vasilakis: University of British Columbia
B G Sobolev: University of British Columbia
L Kuramoto: Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, Vancouver General Hospital
A R Levy: University of British Columbia

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2007, vol. 58, issue 2, 202-211

Abstract: Abstract The purpose of this paper is to compare two methods of scheduling outpatient clinic appointments in the setting where the availability of surgeons for appointments depends on other clinical activities. We used discrete-event simulation to evaluate the likely impact of the scheduling methods on the number of patients waiting for appointments, and the times to appointment and to surgery. The progression of individual patients in a surgical service was modelled as a series of updates in patient records in reaction to events generated by care delivery processes in an asynchronous fashion. We used the Statecharts visual formalism to define states and transitions within each care delivery process, based on detailed functional and behavioural specifications. Our results suggest that pooling referrals, so that clinic appointments are scheduled with the first available surgeon, has a differential impact on different segments of patient flow and across surgical priority groups.

Keywords: health service; simulation; hospitals; behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602235 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:58:y:2007:i:2:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2602235

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602235

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().