Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Flexibility And Capacity Allocation Under Uncertain Prescheduled (Non-Urgent) Demand And Same-Day (Urgent) Demand In Primary Care Practices, Xiaoling Gao

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, we are applying and extending well-established concepts of flexibility in manufacturing and service sectors to a healthcare setting: primary care. In the healthcare scenarios, appointments are booked over time and thus future resource capacity is sequentially being allocated under partial demand information. In manufacturing flexibility is typically presented as a technology choice that requires heavy investment for expensive flexible equipment, or highly cross-trained workers, but can then be used at little or no cost to satisfy demand. In primary care, however, the resources are inherently flexible, as primary care physicians are naturally able to see other panel's …