Managing Obstetrical Appointments with Upgrade and Compensate Decisions
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Lu, Yuwei
- Source
- 2021 International Conference on E-Commerce and E-Management (ICECEM) ICECEM E-Commerce and E-Management (ICECEM), 2021 International Conference on. :588-593 Sep, 2021
- Subject
- Computing and Processing
Pediatrics
Analytical models
Electronic commerce
Public healthcare
public healthcare service
appointment scheduling
customer satisfaction
- Language
The obstetrical department often has multiple types of wards with unbalanced demand for each type. A so-called “single-room” is significantly more popular than other wards in China. This paper considers an appointment control problem for obstetric patients who mainly request the single-room ward but can be upgraded or downgraded to other wards. We develop an analytical model with decisions to determine the appointment quota months ahead of childbirth and the recursive actions to upgrade or compensate patients on the day of childbirth. We describe the problem formally and find out that the overall revenue is unimodal convexed concerning the appointment quota under a slack condition. Managerial insights are also provided.