K. Madhava Sarma Memorial Distinguished Lecture
3.30 p.m. - 4.30 p.m., Seminar Hall
Stochastic Models of Appointment Scheduling In Healthcare
Vidyadhar Kulkarni
Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North Carolina.
06-11-19

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Abstract

Providing healthcare to its citizens continues to consume an even-increasing fraction of the national income in most countries. Hence it is imperative to bring the tools of scientific management of service systems to the healthcare systems. Any health care system has to balance the three competing objective functions: quality, access, and cost. In this talk we will focus on the appointment scheduling to reduce the cost of service by finding an optimal tradeoff between waiting time of the patients and the idle time and over-time of the doctors. There are many aspects one needs to consider: random demand from patients, no-shows and cancellations, scheduled vs. walk-in patients, emergency patients, repeat patients, etc. We will briefly touch upon the models that attempt to incorporate these aspects, and discuss the statistical and operations research tools that can be brought to solve the problem.