Appointment Requests from Multiple Channels: Characterizing Optimal Set of Appointment Days to Offer with Patient Preferences

Feray Tunçalp

We consider the appointment scheduling for a physician in a healthcare facility. Patients contact the facility through either a call center to be scheduled immediately, or a website to be scheduled the following morning. Patients are further categorized into two types according to the revenues they generate, possibly depending on their insurance types, and their day preferences, represented through multinomial logit models. The facility aims to maximize the long-run average revenue, while ensuring that a certain service level is satisfied for patients generating lower revenue. The facility has two decisions: offering a set of appointment days and choosing the patient type to prioritize while contacting the website patients. Model 1 is a periodic Markov Decision Process (MDP) model without the service level constraint. After characterizing the structure of the optimal policy, we develop a booking limit improvement algorithm using simulation optimization and approximate dynamic programming techniques. Model 2 is the constrained MDP model that accommodates the service level constraint and has an optimal randomized policy with a special structure. This allows us to develop an efficient method to identify a wellperforming policy. We illustrate the performance of this policy through numerical experiments, where systems with and without no-shows are considered.

Short Bio

Feray Tunçalp is an assistant professor at Bilkent University. Before joining Bilkent University, she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Operations and Technology department at University College London School of Management between 2021 and 2024. She received her PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Management from Koç University in 2021. Her research focuses on the optimal design of healthcare processes and services by accounting for patients’ preferences and strategic choices as well as behavioral tendencies and cognitive limitations of doctors and patients.

Venue

Friday, May 2nd, 2025, 4:00 pm

IE Building, Halim Doğrusöz Auditorium (Ground Floor-03)