Qu Xiuli, Shi Jing
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, North Carolina A&T State University, 1601 East Market Street, Greensboro, NC 27411, USA.
Health Care Manag Sci. 2009 Mar;12(1):99-114. doi: 10.1007/s10729-008-9083-6.
The successful implementation of open access scheduling requires the match of daily healthcare provider capacity and patient demand at the high level of total capacity and the low levels of individual capacities for different types of appointments. In this paper, we introduce 12 scheduling rules for determining the two-level provider capacities and compare them in terms of four performance metrics: the probabilities of granting requests for fixed and open appointments, and the expectation and the variance of the number of patients consulted. Our analytical results show that adjusting low level provider capacities can reduce the difference between the two probabilities. When the ratios of low level capacities to the high level provider capacity are fixed, the two probabilities increase with the increase in the high level capacity. Meanwhile, our numerical results demonstrate that the expectation and the variance of the number of patients consulted increase with the increase in the high level capacity. The results provide insights in determining optimal two-level provider capacities to match daily patient demand. Potential approaches to optimality are also proposed based on the results.
开放获取排班的成功实施要求在总容量的高水平以及不同类型预约的个体容量的低水平上，使每日医疗服务提供者的能力与患者需求相匹配。在本文中，我们引入了12种用于确定两级提供者能力的排班规则，并根据四个绩效指标对它们进行比较：批准固定预约和开放预约请求的概率，以及咨询患者数量的期望值和方差。我们的分析结果表明，调整低水平提供者能力可以减少这两个概率之间的差异。当低水平能力与高水平提供者能力的比率固定时，这两个概率会随着高水平能力的增加而增加。同时，我们的数值结果表明，咨询患者数量的期望值和方差会随着高水平能力的增加而增加。这些结果为确定最佳两级提供者能力以匹配每日患者需求提供了见解。还基于这些结果提出了潜在的优化方法。
