When waiting to see a doctor is less irritating: Understanding patient preferences and choice behavior in appointment scheduling

摘要

With growing online healthcare service systems, patients have become more demanding and conscious of the service they receive. Therefore, knowledge of patient preferences and choice behavior in care seeking is essential for managing the operations of modem healthcare enterprises. The article studies patient preferences and choice behavior in outpatient appointment scheduling in a primary care setting. One particularly important factor patients consider in scheduling outpatient appointments is the speed versus quality trade-off. Open access is a widely used scheduling method that has shorter delays, is generally favored by patients and has, in many cases, improved patient satisfaction. However, the benefit of shortening appointment delay is countered by the associated negative impact on other attributes of appointments valued by (some) patients. Four discrete choice experiments were designed and conducted in which participants are offered appointment choices with different combinations of attribute levels and asked to choose the one they prefer. All four studies consistently establish that patients have strong preferences in the following operational attributes when scheduling appointments: appointment delay, flexibility of appointment times, doctor of choice, in-clinic waiting and out-of-pocket payments.