A three-stage Appointment Scheduling for an Outpatient Chemotherapy Unit using integer programming

摘要

Due to increasing demand, the oncology clinics have been experiencing higher workloads and increasing delays for analyses, drugs' preparation, consultation and chemotherapy administration. In this study, we work with an oncology clinic where patients receive chemotherapy treatment after a specific consultation with a referee oncologist. This problem is considered as a three-stage hybrid flow-shop problem with additional resources constraints. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) is developed to generate balanced appointment schedules for oncologist visit, pharmacist drugs' preparation and chemotherapy treatment. We use CPLEX solver to solve the model. Numerical experiments based on data collected from a Tunisian clinic show the capability of the proposed method to reduce patients' waiting times.