BOOKS OF RtfiDIfGS - PAHO/WHO

- 16u -
7. Consider overbooking policies based on no-show and late
cancellation statistics, by department or by physician.
8. Consider calling patients to ascertain arrival. By doing
this, many of the predictable no-shows could be determined.
Personnel requirements for performing this job
need to be considered.
9. Consider altemative scheduling methods to optimize patient
waiting time and physician idle time. The following
factors are among those which should be considered:
staff-fellow interaction, room constraint, patient load, and
appointment sheet time increments. Computer Simulation
can be used to pretest the efficacy of various altematives.
10. Consider altering the availability of each appointment
type, based or both physician determined criteria and patient
needs. Patient needs can be determined to a certain
extent by examining appointment availability data and
data on unfilled appointments.
11. Study room availability constraints and the effect of same
on doctors' schedules, fellows' schedules, staff-fellow
interaction, and hospital rounds. Again, Computer Simulation
is a good study vehicle.
12. Define a patient priority classification schc ne, based on
patient's urgency and importance, and doctor's professional
interest. Institute this classification scheme
where feasible and acceptable to the individual's practice.
13. Consider providing booking options which will have, for
example, 100% filled appoilntment sheets for the most immediate
time periou, 80% filled for the next time period,
60% filled .. , etc. Such a booking procedure will allow
more urgent patients (as determined by the patient priority
scheme, described above in 12) to be scheduled sooner and
without overloading the doctors.
14. Define the optimal time periods for the above, for each
desk or each doctor and each appointment type. As an
example, a department could have new appointment times
fully booked for a two week period while the consult times
could be obtained on the day of the request.