Track: Healthcare Operations and Services

Abstract

With an ageing population and more efficient treatments, demand for cancer care is rising; leading to long waiting times and a significant increase in delays in chemotherapy clinics. Chemotherapy operations planning and scheduling is a multi-facet problem due to numerous aspects such as the variety of chemotherapy treatment plans, the flow of patients, and the interdependence between the departments. Patient flow is affected by many delays at different stages; doctors’ and pharmacy’s delay, referral to specialist, and waiting time for chemotherapy. The aim of this work is to improve the waiting time of chemotherapy patients by studying the flow of patients from the register time until departure time. The typical characteristics of outpatient chemotherapy are detailed in this paper based on a real-life case study in Alexandria, Egypt. The data collected showed that 66% out of 144 studied patients arrive earlier than scheduled, which results in a FIFO flow that affected the scheduling system. Hence, most planning and scheduling efforts are ineffective. A simulation model is built using the data collected to analyze the flow of patients. Two scenarios are proposed, tested, and compared to the base model and show that improvements can be attained by reducing unnecessary delays.