The Patient Patient: The Performance of Traditional versus Open-Access Scheduling Policies

We compare traditional and open-access scheduling policies for outpatient medical practices in terms of the number of patients served and financial performance. Under a traditional scheduling policy, a patient schedules an appointment in advance and there is a significant possibility of patient no-shows. In response, doctors overbook patients to reduce the idle time created by no-shows. Under an open-access scheduling policy, all appointments are scheduled the day of the appointment, thereby eliminating patient no-shows but creating more randomness in the daily number of appointments. In contrast to earlier works, we consider the optimal average number of patients served and find that the open-access policy may lead doctors to serve a greater number of patients but that the traditional policy may be more profitable by providing doctors more control over their schedule and ability to limit overtime.