Dynamic process modelling of patients` no-show rates and overbooking strategies in healthcare clinics

Abstract: Clinic appointment cancellation and `no-shows` by patients can disturb day-to-day scheduling and lead to inefficient resource allocation and lost revenue. This paper presents an approach for dynamic process modelling and analysis of patients` no-show rates in conjunction with the overbooking strategy. To this end, a dynamic discrete event simulation model of a clinic operation is developed to assess current clinic performance under various no-show rates and patterns and test several overbooking strategies to improve clinic`s efficiency and enhance performance. The approach significance includes the analysis of variability in scheduling and treatment times, the impact of patients reneging, and walk-in patients. In addition, the paper develops a unified clinic utility function that analyses the impact of overbooking on clinic revenue (patients treated), capacity (utilisation), and customer service (wait time). An example of a general practice (GP) healthcare clinic is used to illustrate the development and application of the proposed approach.

Keywords: process modelling; appointment scheduling; healthcare clinics; no-show rates; overbooking strategies; discrete event simulation; engineering management; appointment cancellations; treatment times; patient reneging; walk-in patients; clinic revenue; capacity; customer service.