title: [Decision rules to schedule patient appointments].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Outpatient scheduling has a significant impact on the perceived quality of service by the users and the efficient use of resources in the health system. There are mathematical methods that assist in solving this problem, but are seldom applied.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To propose decision rules that are based on the own conditions of each institution and indicate which appointment system is the most suitable for the decision makers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Through computer simulation, the effect of a wide range of decision and environmental factors over the appointment systems performance was assessed, in order to determine how these factors affect them.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Considering performance indicators associated to the patient's satisfaction and resources utilization, scheduling shorter length patients (e.g. check-up patients) in the beginning of the working day resulted to be in the efficient solutions frontier, as well as scheduling patients in one person blocks (shifting to multiple patient blocks only if resources utilization indicators are prioritized).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Performance indicators are more sensitive to the sequence used to schedule different length patients, rather than the number of patients scheduled per block. Moreover, decision rules based on the institution priorities are proposed, which are quite robust to environmental factors.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. juanpedro.sepulveda@novaccion.cl
authors.forename: Juan Pedro
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Sepúlveda R
authors.forename: Cristián
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Berroeta M
mesh_terms: D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003657:Decision Making; D058016:Health Facility Administration; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010045:Outpatients; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D013997:Time Factors