Optimal outpatient appointment scheduling

Abstract

In this paper optimal outpatient appointment scheduling is studied. A local search procedure is derived that converges to the optimal schedule with a weighted average of expected waiting times of patients, idle time of the doctor and tardiness (lateness) as objective. No-shows are allowed to happen. For certain combinations of parameters the well-known Bailey-Welch rule is found to be the optimal appointment schedule. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007.