Radiology scheduling with consideration of patient characteristics to improve patient access to care and medical resource utilization

The objective of this paper is to redesign a scheduling scheme in a hospital radiology department that accounts for patient characteristics to improve patient access to care and utilization of medical resources. Patients’ characteristics are used to determine the length of required procedure time. The reclassification of patient groups is demonstrated using a decision tree technique and an algorithm based on the least weighted average coefficient of variation. The results indicate that the proposed scheduling scheme reduces patient wait time as much as 71%, increases the radiographer utilization by at most 83%, reduces overall cost by as far as 54%, and improves patient access by 1.25 times than current schedule capability. The proposed approach provides relatively implementable details and a minimal system accommodation, especially for the participated radiology department. The success of the implementation will bring better service for patients and the use of medical resources more efficiently.