A subsidized primary care clinic in Singapore wanted to evaluate the impact of different patient appointment apportionment and patient-doctor allocation strategies on the cycle time that their patients need to spend during their clinic visits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is limited literature on such studies. This paper aims to fill this research gap via scientific evaluation o...

A subsidized primary care clinic in Singapore wanted to evaluate the impact of different patient appointment apportionment and patient-doctor allocation strategies on the cycle time that their patients need to spend during their clinic visits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is limited literature on such studies. This paper aims to fill this research gap via scientific evaluation o...

The prognostic significance of early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention in inflammatory rheumatic diseases has been well documented. However, a shortage of rheumatologists often impedes this approach in clinical practice. Therefore, it is of importance to identify those patients referred for diagnosis who would benefit most from a specialist's care. We applied a telephone-based triage for a...

This paper studies the real-life problems of outpatient clinics having the multiple objectives of minimizing resource overtime, patient waiting time, and waiting area congestion. In the clinic, there are several patient classes, each of which follows different treatment procedure flow paths through a multiphase and multiserver queuing system with scarce staff and limited space. We incorporate t...

BACKGROUND In Cameroon, only two-thirds of children with HIV exposure or infection receive appropriate HIV-directed medical care. Mortality, antiretroviral therapy resistance and suboptimal virological response are strongly related to missed opportunities for treatment, and, more specifically, to skipped scheduled medical appointments. The present trial, MORE CARE (Mobile Reminders for Cameroon...

Since the 1976 appointment of the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP), health care equity has been an explicit goal of resource allocation within the NHS. According to this principle, health care resources should be geographically distributed to ensure ‘equal opportunity of access to health care for people at equal risk’. RAWP was superseded by the Resource Allocation Group in 1995, which ...

BACKGROUND Allocation of provider time across clinical, administrative, educational, and research activities may influence job satisfaction, productivity, and quality of care, yet we know little about what determines time allocation. AIMS To investigate factors associated with time allocation, we surveyed all mental health providers in one Veterans Health Administration (VHA) network. We hypo...

Walk-in patients can take a large portion of outpatient visits in comprehensive hospitals. In current common practice, an even number appointments is assigned to each slot and with appointment are given strictly higher priority than walk-in patients. As result, usually wait longer incur noticeable dissatisfaction. To improve their satisfaction, we propose integrated optimization approach for pa...