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Simulation analysis of appointment scheduling in an outpatient department of internal medicine

Published: 04 December 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Long waiting times for treatment in the outpatient department of internal medicine, followed by short consultations has long been a complaint of patients. This issue is becoming increasingly important in Japan with the progressively aging society. In this context, a discrete event simulation model to examine various appointment schedules in a mixed-patient type environment in an outpatient department of a general hospital was developed. A special purpose data generator was designed to validate the model and to conduct experiments in bottleneck situations at consultation rooms in the existing system. Some efficient appointment schedules (ASs) were identified, which drastically reduced patient waiting time while keeping doctor idle time as low as possible without adding extra resources. The sensitivity of performance was examined under three realistic environmental factors: no show, variance of consultation time, and variation of walk-ins.

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  1. Simulation analysis of appointment scheduling in an outpatient department of internal medicine

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      WSC '05: Proceedings of the 37th conference on Winter simulation
      December 2005
      2769 pages
      ISBN:0780395190

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      Winter Simulation Conference

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      Published: 04 December 2005

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      WSC '05 Paper Acceptance Rate 209 of 316 submissions, 66%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 3,413 of 5,075 submissions, 67%

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      • (2015)Modelling and simulation of an outpatient surgery unitProceedings of the 2015 Winter Simulation Conference10.5555/2888619.2888791(1525-1536)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2015
      • (2012)Operations analysis and appointment scheduling for an outpatient chemotherapy departmentProceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference10.5555/2429759.2429866(1-12)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2012
      • (2010)Integrated agent-oriented modeling and simulation of population and healthcare delivery networkProceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference10.5555/2433508.2433794(2327-2339)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2010
      • (2009)Simulation model to investigate flexible workload management for healthcare and servicescape environmentWinter Simulation Conference10.5555/1995456.1995725(1946-1956)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2009
      • (2008)Outpatient appointment scheduling in a multi facility systemProceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation10.5555/1516744.1517018(1563-1571)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2008
      • (2008)Optimizing staffing schedule in light of patient satisfaction for the whole outpatient hospital wardProceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation10.5555/1516744.1517007(1500-1508)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2008
      • (2007)Modeling of patient flows in a large-scale outpatient hospital ward by making use of electronic medical recordsProceedings of the 39th conference on Winter simulation: 40 years! The best is yet to come10.5555/1351542.1351812(1523-1531)Online publication date: 9-Dec-2007
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      • (2006)Simulation analysis of an outpatient department of internal medicine in a university hospitalProceedings of the 38th conference on Winter simulation10.5555/1218112.1218193(425-432)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2006

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