An Appointment Order Outpatient Scheduling System That Improves Outpatient Experience

Patient wait time and access to care have long been a recognized problem in modern outpatient healthcare delivery systems. Despite all the efforts to develop appointment rules and policies, the problem of long patient waits persists. Regardless of the reasons, the fact remains that there are few implemented models for effective scheduling that consider patient wait times, physician idle time, overtime, ancillary service time, as well as individual no-show rate, and are generalized sufficiently to accommodate a variety of outpatient clinic settings. The goal of this research is to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery by developing a patient scheduling system that meets the clinical policies without overbooking while using an innovative „wait ratio‟ concept, a patient arrival schedule from the physician schedule accounting for ancillary services, an evidence-based predictive model of no-show probability for individual patient, and a model-supported dynamic overbooking policy to reduce the negative impact of no-shows. This research provides a step-bystep method for implementation of a scheduling model in outpatient clinics. Consequently, this research will improve the outpatient experience for both patients and medical providers, increase patient access to care, and ultimately enhance the quality of care.