Medical Appointment Overbooking And Optimal Scheduling: Tradeoffs Between Schedule Efficiency And Accessibility To Service

Abstract

We propose a framework that utilizes a stochastic mixed-integer linear program for guiding scheduling decisions under a simulation environment. With this framework, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the tradeoffs between schedule efficiency and accessibility to service. Our computational experiments suggest that a session capacity approximate to the request rate can balance the multiple conflicting objectives more effectively; a fixed capacity policy can be as effective as a dynamic overbooking policy under the setting of a constant request rate; and a dynamic overbooking policy leads to a slightly better performance under the setting of a non-homogeneous appointment request rate.