Improving resource utilization for diagnostic services through flexible inpatient scheduling: A method for improving resource utilization

J Patrick () and M L Puterman
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J Patrick: University of British Columbia
M L Puterman: University of British Columbia

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2007, vol. 58, issue 2, 235-245

Abstract: Abstract We present a method to increase the utilization of and reduce the waiting times for an under-capacitated diagnostic resource in the presence of uncertain demand with several priority levels. We consider the case of a computed tomography (CT) scanning department that services both high-priority in-patients and lower priority outpatients. Current practice calls for all in-patient demand to be met on the day of the request. Our proposal looks at the benefit of reserving space for carrying over a percentage of non-emergency in-patient demand to the next day and utilizing a pool of on-call outpatients who can respond quickly to available capacity. We formulate and solve an optimization problem that returns a reservation policy that minimizes unused capacity subject to an overtime constraint. We use a simulation to demonstrate a significant reduction in the growth rate of outpatient waiting time resulting from using the proposed method and investigate the sensitivity of results to several model assumptions.

Keywords: scheduling; health services; optimization; simulation; reservation policies; waiting times (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602242

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