Managing Outpatient Cycle Times in Hospitals Using Integrated Closed-Loop Approaches.

Long waiting times in outpatient clinics have multiple adverse effects on patients and their attendants, staff and hospital management. Several approaches practiced to manage the cycle time have been proposed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of implementing closed-loop based multiple approaches together.

An intelligent real-time scheduler for out-patient clinics: A multi-agent system model.

Scheduling of resources and patients are crucial in outpatient clinics, particularly when the patient demand is high and patient arrivals are random. Generally, outpatient clinic systems are push systems where scheduling is based on average demand prediction and is considered for long term (monthly or bimonthly). Often, planning and actual scenario vary due to uncertainty and variability in demand and this mismatch results in prolonged waiting times and under-utilization of resources.

Integral patient scheduling in outpatient clinics under demand uncertainty to minimize patient waiting times.

This study addressed the problem of scheduling walk-in patients in real time. Outpatient clinics encounter uncertainty in patient demand. In addition, the disparate departments are locally (department-centric) organized, leading to prolonged waiting times for patients.