Many primary care offices and other medical practices regularly experience long backlogs for appointments. These backlogs are exacerbated by a significant level of last-minute cancellations or “no-shows,” which have the effect of wasting capacity. In this paper, we conceptualize such an appointment system as a single-server queueing system in which customers who are about to enter service have ...

There has been a growing awareness in recent years of the need for health administrators to consider the objectives and welfare of both patients and staff when formulating working policy, and, in particular, the widespread introduction of appointment schemes in a wide range of clinics and general practice surgeries has been an important instrument in balancing the time wasted by doctors (in wai...

BACKGROUND To determine whether the length of time between alcohol-related attendance in the emergency department (ED) and follow-up appointment with an alcohol health worker (AHW) alters attendance rate at the AHW clinic. METHODS We examined paper and computerized records made by AHWs over a 4-year period, collecting data on the length of time between identification of alcohol misuse and the...

BACKGROUND Patient access to primary care appointments is not routinely measured despite the increasing interest in this aspect of practice activity. The generation of standardised data (or benchmarks) for access could inform developments within primary care organisations and act as a quality marker for clinical governance. Logically the setting of targets should be based on a sound system of m...

These papers are produced by Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. They are circulated for discussion purposes only. Their contents should be considered preliminary and are not to be quoted without the authors' permission. In recent years, the performance-based approach to contracting for medical services has been gaining popularity across different healthcare delivery syste...