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.
D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009874:Operations Research; D010044:Outpatient Clinics, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States