Hospital Appointment Scheduling in Presence of Walk-ins and Emergency Arrivals

Abstract

Appointment systems in many service facilities, especially in hospitals, experience walk-ins and emergency arrivals in addition to the scheduled arrivals. While the emergency arrivals need to be served as early as possible with the highest priority, the walk-ins are usually served with the lowest priority and are served on the occurrence of no-shows. This may disrupt the original schedule and affect the performance of the appointment system related to the scheduled patients (their waiting time). In this chapter, an attempt has been made to draw insights about the appropriate appointment scheduling rules for multiple classes of scheduled patients in presence of walk-ins and emergency patients. A number of simple scheduling rules are evaluated under different patterns of walk-ins and emergency arrivals. The analyses are illustrated with an example appointment system of a CT scan department of a hospital.