Sequential clinical scheduling with service criteria

This study investigates sequential appointment scheduling with service criteria. It uses a constraintbased approach with service criteria bounded in a constraint set in contrast to the more typical weighted linear objective function. Properties are derived and a sequential scheduling algorithm is developed. Fairness properties of generated schedules are considered in detail, where fairness is the uniformity of performance across patients. New unfairness measures are proposed and used to capture the inequity among patients assigned to different slots. Other criteria such as expectation and variance of patient waiting time, queue length, and overtime are also considered. The fairness/revenue tradeoff is investigated as is the flexibility of the constraint-based approach in handling unavailable time periods. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.