Appointment System Modeling in Presence of Seasonal Demand and
Walk-Ins in Outpatient Care
Yrd. Doç. Dr.
Tuğba Çayırlı
DEPARTMENT
Economics and
Administrative Sciences
CONTACT
[email protected]
FUNDING SCHEME
TÜBİTAK 3501
START DATE
01.04.2010
DURATION
16 months
2010 National Grants
This study investigates appointment systems as combinations of access rules and appointment rules that are explicitly
designed for dealing with walk-in seasonality. In terms of access rules, alternative policies are tested for adjusting capacity
to incorporate the intra-week and monthly seasonalities of walk-ins. In terms of appointment rules, various strategies are
tested to determine which particular slots to double-book or leave open in cases where seasonal walk-in rates exceed or fall
short of the overall yearly rate, taking into consideration the intra-day variations in walk-in arrivals. Simulation optimization
is used to find quasi-optimal strategies, which are consequently used to derive some practical heuristic solutions to the
appointment-scheduling problem. The goal is to provide some guidelines for healthcare practitioners on how to mosteffectively design their appointment systems when seasonal walk-ins exist. Another important contribution is that, unlike
earlier studies that have addressed capacity and appointment-scheduling problems separately, our integrated model allows
evaluation of several micro (in-clinic) and macro level performance measures simultaneously.
Economics and Administrative Sciences
ABSTRACT
OZU BUDGET
69,840.00 TL
19