Improving patient-care services at an oncology clinic using a flexible and adaptive scheduling procedure

Abstract

This paper studies an online scheduling problem dealing with patients’ multiple requests for chemotherapy treatments at the cancer centre of a major metropolitan hospital in Canada. The proposed solution to the problem is an adaptive and flexible procedure that systematically combines two optimization models. The first model is intended to dynamically schedule incoming appointment requests, which arrive in the form of waiting lists, and the second model is used to reschedule already booked appointments with the goal of better allocating resources as new information becomes available. The performance and potential impact of the proposed procedure is assessed using historical data provided by the cancer centre. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is carried out to draw insights that may help hospital managers to deal more efficiently with both incoming requests and unexpected events.