Time Series and Appointment Management - Hospitals

Michael Stobie (MStobie@c031.aone.net.au)
Tue, 28 Nov 1995 15:26:11 +0100

I'm a medical administrator in a public hospital in Melbourne, Australia. I
am developing a fuzzy logic application to manage the appointment system for
40,000 Outpatients. The problem is trying to keep the number of
appointments per clinic, made anywhere up to 12 months in advance, in line
with the expected number of doctors attending clinics, sometimes not known
until a month in advance.
The demand for appointments per doctor per clinic session (y) ideally should
be close to the formula:
y = 24 - (1E-06)X^3 + (0.0008)X^2 - (0.22)X
where X is the number of days to clinic date. There are a number of
variables which will increase the demand for appointments closer to the
clinic date, requiring quarantining a specific clinic date until 8 to 12
weeks in advance.
Has anyone experience with trying to produce a fuzzy solution to a similar
problem.

Many thanks

Michael Stobie