Outpatient Appointment Scheduling

Outpatient Appointment Scheduling Problem (OAP) is the question an outpatient clinic operator faces of designing the slot grid and the assignment policy on a doctor's calendar: slot duration (equal-spacing, variable-block, dome shape), patients per slot (single booking or double booking / overbooking), priority of urgent versus routine patients, panel-doctor assignment. Objective: a weighted minimum of patient wait time, doctor idle time and same-day access. The foundational paper is Bailey (1952), with a queue-theoretic first model for a Copenhagen-style outpatient clinic — the two-patients-in-the-first-slot rule (Bailey-Welch) originates here; the canonical survey is Cayirli and Veral (2003); the modern application-side map is Gupta and Denton (2008). Solution methods: deterministic MIP (fixed no-show + fixed service time), stochastic programming (log-normal service time + no-show probability), simulation-optimisation (the most common practical approach), online policy (dynamic intra-day booking).