title: Comparison of Traditional and Open-Access Appointment Scheduling for Exponentially Distributed Service Time.
abstract: This paper compares the performance measures of traditional appointment scheduling (AS) with those of an open-access appointment scheduling (OA-AS) system with exponentially distributed service time. A queueing model is formulated for the traditional AS system with no-show probability. The OA-AS models assume that all patients who call before the session begins will show up for the appointment on time. Two types of OA-AS systems are considered: with a same-session policy and with a same-or-next-session policy. Numerical results indicate that the superiority of OA-AS systems is not as obvious as those under deterministic scenarios. The same-session system has a threshold of relative waiting cost, after which the traditional system always has higher total costs, and the same-or-next-session system is always preferable, except when the no-show probability or the weight of patients' waiting is low. It is concluded that open-access policies can be viewed as alternative approaches to mitigate the negative effects of no-show patients.
authors.forename: Chongjun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Jiafu
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Bowen
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Richard Y K
authors.initials: RY
authors.lastname: Fung
mesh_terms: D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D003199:Computer Systems; D000067455:No-Show Patients; D012984:Software; D013997:Time Factors