Managing Alternative Patient Appointments Using P-Graph Methodology.

Background: Patient appointment scheduling is one of the main challenging tasks in the healthcare administration and is constantly in the focus of theoretical researches. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of the P-graph (Process graph) methodology to find the n-b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Studies in Health Technology & Informatics Vol. 271; pp. 57 - 65
Autores principales: SÜLE, Zoltán, BAUMGARTNER, János, VATHY-FOGARASSY, Ágnes
Formato: algorithm case study equations & formulas research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. 2020
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Background: Patient appointment scheduling is one of the main challenging tasks in the healthcare administration and is constantly in the focus of theoretical researches. Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of the P-graph (Process graph) methodology to find the n-best alternative for patient's scheduling. Methods: The patient appointment scheduling task was formalised as an integer linear programming problem and was considered as a process network synthesis problem. The optimal and n-best alternative solutions were determined by an efficient branch and bound algorithm implemented in a decision support system. Results: Experimental results show, that the P-graph methodology can be effectively applied to produce the optimal scheduling for the examinations and to find the alternatives of the best scheduling.