Title

What Is A Specialty Clinic Really Capable Of?

Keywords

Clinic capability; Performance goals; Scheduling policy; System dynamics model

Abstract

The actual capability of a clinic can never be known with certainty unless clear and explicit performance goals are established. In the case of Veterans Administration Medical Centers (VAMCs), one of the much-watched performance measures, the percentage of patients seen within a set number of days of their desired dates (typically anywhere from 14 to 120 days), has been criticized because of its tendency to underestimate both the backlog of patients and how long veterans seeking care are actually waiting. This paper demonstrates, via a case study in a VAMC, three of the significant ways a system dynamics simulation model can help health practitioners determine the actual capability of their services. First, this model encourages the explicit setting of specific goals for performance measures that are critical but also well understood. Second, it can provide reliable estimates of the actual performance of these services and offer means to monitor it over time. Third, it can help practitioners identify realistic goals, and formulate strategies to achieve them via scheduling policies, such as capacity allocation, no-show rescheduling, overbooking and number of appointment slots used by type of patients, just to name a few.

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Publication Title

IIE Annual Conference and Expo 2013

Number of Pages

1275-1282

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

Socpus ID

84900318692 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84900318692

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS