The Development of Patient Scheduling Groups for an Effective Appointment System

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Operations Research
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Patient access and long wait times are significant issues in outpatient systems.
• These problems negatively affect staff productivity, service quality, clinic efficiency, and healthcare costs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To redesign patient types into optimized scheduling groups.
• To minimize the total cost of clinic flow and scheduling flexibility.
• To improve clinic efficiency and patient accessibility.

Main Methods:

• Utilized simulation optimization techniques in a Primary Care physician clinic.
• Collected physician treatment time data for various patient types (ER/UC, FU, NP, OV, PE, WCC).
• Simulated daily clinic flow and appointment requests to calculate costs and identify optimal scheduling groups.

Main Results:

• Clinic flow cost minimized with four scheduling groups (8.3% reduction).
• Flexibility cost minimized with one group.
• Total cost minimized with two groups (WCC separate, others grouped), achieving a 1.3% reduction.

Conclusions:

• An alternative method for redesigning patient scheduling groups was presented.
• Balancing clinic flow and appointment accessibility addresses patient service and access issues.
• The proposed method demonstrates robustness across varying clinic conditions.