Concepedia

Appointment scheduling in health care: Challenges and opportunities

IIE Transactions · 2008 · 1K citations · 59 references

TL;DR

Appointment scheduling systems in primary, specialty, and hospital settings manage provider access, but their performance is limited by variability, preferences, IT, staff experience, and a critical bottleneck in applying Industrial Engineering and Operations Research techniques. This article describes common health care delivery systems and outlines a roadmap for appointment management, highlighting challenges and future opportunities for IE/OR applications. The authors detail decision rules and real‑time response strategies for each delivery environment to guide schedulers. The study maps the state of the art in appointment management and identifies future opportunities for novel IE/OR model applications.

Abstract

Appointment scheduling systems are used by primary and specialty care clinics to manage access to service providers, as well as by hospitals to schedule elective surgeries. Many factors affect the performance of appointment systems including arrival and service time variability, patient and provider preferences, available information technology and the experience level of the scheduling staff. In addition, a critical bottleneck lies in the application of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR) techniques. The most common types of health care delivery systems are described in this article with particular attention on the factors that make appointment scheduling challenging. For each environment relevant decisions ranging from a set of rules that guide schedulers to real-time responses to deviations from plans are described. A road map of the state of the art in the design of appointment management systems is provided and future opportunities for novel applications of IE/OR models are identified.