Title
Assessing the viability of an open access policy in an outpatient clinic: a discrete-event and continuous simulation modeling approach
Abstract
This paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing research project investigating the patient appointment scheduling for an outpatient clinic. The outpatient clinic was experiencing three problems of long patient throughput times, a large backlog of appointments, and a high no-show rate. We believe a new scheduling approach called Open Access could address all three problems. To analyze and make recommendations for improvement to patient cycle time we developed a discrete event simulation. To understand the factors leading to a high no-show rate we developed a systems dynamic simulation model. The study identified feasible strategies the clinic management could implement to greatly improve patient throughput time by 50%. Our preliminary results indicate that Open Access is a viable strategy for the clinic. Ongoing work is being conducted to refine the models and determine the best configuration of an Open Access scheduling policy for the outpatient clinic.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1109/WSC.2005.1574513
Winter Simulation Conference
Keywords
Field
DocType
outpatient clinic,open access policy,patient throughput time,long patient throughput time,continuous simulation modeling approach,preliminary result,open access,new scheduling approach,patient appointment scheduling,clinic management,high no-show rate,patient cycle time,cycle time,scheduling,simulation model,discrete event simulation,continuous simulation,system dynamics
Simulation,Computer science,Scheduling (computing),Dynamic simulation model,Continuous simulation,Throughput,Discrete event simulation
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-7803-9519-0
10
0.79
References 
Authors
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ronald Giachetti121424.01
Edwin A. Centeno2100.79
Martha A. Centeno311116.76
Ramakrishnan Sundaram4143.70