Using Rapid Cycle Improvement (Plan, Do, Study, Act) to Design a Scalable Appointment Scheduling System for Complex...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Administration
• Operations Research
• Clinical Research Management

Background:

• Academic cancer centers face increasing demands due to rising clinical trial accruals.
• Efficient research scheduling is crucial for timely patient access and trial progression.
• Existing scheduling processes may contain inefficiencies and non-value-added activities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To optimize research scheduling efficiency within an academic cancer center.
• To design a scalable research scheduling team structure.
• To meet the growing demands of increased clinical trial accruals.

Main Methods:

• Employed the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) improvement methodology.
• Conducted voice-of-the-customer interviews and mapped baseline workflows.
• Analyzed billing data, calculated cycle time, takt time, and capacity metrics.

Main Results:

• Achieved an 11% decrease in appointment scheduling cycle time.
• Reduced process steps from 15 to 10, eliminating non-value-added activities and waste.
• Observed an 8% increase in appointment requests and a 4% increase in weekly appointments scheduled.

Conclusions:

• The implemented interventions successfully increased research scheduling efficiency.
• Capacity analysis indicates a need for 0.5 additional full-time employees to meet takt time.
• A scalable framework for proactive staffing was developed, applicable across the research enterprise.