Provider Scheduling to Maximize Patient Access.

Area of Science:

• Urology
• Operations Research
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Academic and large urology group practices face complex scheduling challenges.
• Provider schedules must accommodate diverse activities like patient visits, procedures, teaching, and administrative duties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and demonstrate an efficient method for assigning clinic days to urology providers.
• To maximize patient access to appointments by optimizing provider schedules.

Main Methods:

• An integer programming model was proposed to schedule providers for clinic shifts.
• The model considered various constraints including patient visits, procedures, teaching, and administrative tasks.
• A case study in an academic urology clinic was used to implement and evaluate the model.

Main Results:

• The integer programming model generated a feasible schedule that was successfully implemented.
• The optimized schedule showed reduced variability in the number of providers per shift (SD 0.999 vs 1.409).
• A significant increase in patient encounters was observed after implementing the optimized schedule (1,370 vs 1,196).

Conclusions:

• Optimization models provide an efficient and transferable solution for generating provider clinic templates.
• These models effectively integrate clinical and academic responsibilities, enhancing patient appointment availability.
• Periodic schedule optimization can adapt to changes in providers or their constraints.