The effect of delay rules in controlling unscheduled visits to hospitals.

The increased demand of unscheduled visits to hospital outpatient facilities, and particularly to walk-in clinics, necessitates the consideration of means to control this flow and to reduce in-hospital waiting times. A model is developed in which a percentage of the unscheduled visits are assumed to be delayable, e.g., patients with non-urgent complaints who call may be asked to delay their arrivals for specified lengths of time. A simple rule for determining, dynamically, the length of this delay was examined by computer simulation. The results demonstrate significant reduction of in-facility waiting times while only marginally increasing the time patients wait from their initial contact with the clinic until seen by a practitioner.