An agent-based collaborative model for orthopedic outpatient scheduling

In many Asian countries, healthcare system has a mixed-type registration which accepts both walk-in patients and scheduled patients. That makes outpatient scheduling a difficult task and results in long outpatient waiting time. Nowadays, hospitals in Taiwan emphasize on providing high quality service for patients. Survey of outpatient satisfaction showed that at Taoyuan Armed Forces General Hospital the long waiting time is by far the most dissatisfied service quality. Current data shows those outpatients need to wait for an average of up to two hours before being served. In attempt to reduce outpatient waiting time, we proposed a genuine agent-based adoptive scheduling model for service sectors within which fixed scheduling rules will not work because humans are autonomous and their behavior will change according to the real-time situation and the scheduling rules applied. The proposed model uses software agents to dynamically adjust the scheduling rules to adapt to the real-time situation in the clinic. Simulation models were built based on two months of data collected manually from the hospital to test the proposed model. Results showed that agent-based collaborative control system can reduce waiting time by29%~36% for walk-in patients and 61%~63%for scheduled patients respectively.