Abstract
Appointment systems in many service facilities, especially in hospitals, experience walk-ins and emergency arrivals in addition to the scheduled arrivals. While the emergency arrivals need to be served as early as possible with the highest priority, the walk-ins are usually served with the lowest priority and are served on the occurrence of no-shows. This may disrupt the original schedule and affect the performance of the appointment system related to the scheduled patients (their waiting time). In this chapter, an attempt has been made to draw insights about the appropriate appointment scheduling rules for multiple classes of scheduled patients in presence of walk-ins and emergency patients. A number of simple scheduling rules are evaluated under different patterns of walk-ins and emergency arrivals. The analyses are illustrated with an example appointment system of a CT scan department of a hospital.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bhattacharjee P, Ray PK (2014) Patient flow modelling and performance analysis of healthcare delivery processes in hospitals: a review and reflections. Comput Ind Eng 78:299–312
Wang PP (1999) Sequencing and scheduling N customers for a stochastic server. Eur J Oper Res 119:729–738
Cayirli T, Veral E, Rosen H (2008) Assessment of patient classification in appointment system design. Prod Oper Manag 17(3):338–353
Kolisch R, Sickinger S (2008) Providing radiology health care services to stochastic demand of different customer classes. OR Spectr 30:375–395
Cayirli T, Veral E (2003) Outpatient scheduling in health care: a review of literature. Prod Oper Manag 12:519–549
Gupta D, Denton B (2008) Appointment scheduling in health care: challenges and opportunities. IIE Trans 40:800–819
Klassen KJ, Rohleder TR (1996) Scheduling outpatient appointments in a dynamic environment. J Oper Manag 14(2):83–101
Rohleder TR, Klassen KJ (2000) Using client-variance information to improve dynamic appointment scheduling performance. Omega 5(3):201–209
Baily NTJ (1952) A study of queues and appointment systems in hospitals outpatients departments with special reference to waiting times. J R Stat Soc 14:185–199
Liu L, Liu X (1998) Block appointment systems for outpatient clinics with multiple doctors. J Oper Res Soc 49(1):254–259
Ho C, Lau H (1992) Minimizing total cost in scheduling outpatient appointments. Manag Sci 38(12):1750–1764
Hassin R, Mendel S (2008) Scheduling arrivals to queues: a single-server model with no-shows. Manag Sci 54(3):565–572
Luo J, Kulkarni VG, Ziya S (2012) Appointment scheduling under patient no-shows and service interruptions. Manuf Serv Oper Manage 14(4):670–684
Cayirli T, Veral E, Rosen H (2006) Designing appointment scheduling systems for ambulatory care services. Health Care Manage Sci 9(1):47–58
Doi M, Chen YM, Osawa H (1997) A queueing model in which arrival times are scheduled. Oper Res Lett 21:249–252
Robinson LW, Chen RR (2011) Estimating the implied value of the customer’s waiting time. Manuf Serv Oper Manage 13(1):53–57
Pegden CD, Rosenshine M (1990) Scheduling arrivals to queues. Comput Oper Res 17(4):343–348
Jouini O, Benjaafar S (2011) Queueing systems with appointment-driven arrivals, non-punctual customers, and no-shows. Working paper, July 4, 2011
Fiems D, Koole G, Nain P (2012) Waiting times of scheduled patients in the presence of emergency requests. Working paper, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam. Accessed 20 June 2012, http://www.math.vu.nl/_koole/articles/2005report1/art.pdf
Jerbi B, Kamoun H (2011) Multiobjective study to implement outpatient appointment system at Hedi Chaker Hospital. Simul Model Pract Theory 19:1363–1370
Lee S, Min D, Ryu JH, Yih Y (2013) A simulation study of appointment scheduling in outpatient clinics: open access and overbooking. Simulation 89(12):1459–1473
Klassen KJ, Yoogalingam R (2013) Appointment system design with interruptions and physician lateness. Int J Oper Prod Manage 33(4):394–414
Klassen KJ, Yoogalingam R (2009) Improving performance in outpatient services with a simulation optimization approach. Prod Oper Manag 18(4):447–458
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bhattacharjee, P., Ray, P.K. (2016). Hospital Appointment Scheduling in Presence of Walk-ins and Emergency Arrivals. In: Mandal, P., Vong, J. (eds) Smart Technologies for Smart Nations. Managing the Asian Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-585-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-585-3_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-287-584-6
Online ISBN: 978-981-287-585-3
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)