Healthcare scheduling policies in a sequence-number based appointment system for outpatients’ arrivals: Early, on time, or late?

Abstract Healthcare providers consider outpatients’ waiting time an important measure of customer satisfaction and future expectations. This paper examines two appointment scheduling patterns and three late arrival policies in a sequence-number based appointment system, which is rarely discussed in the literature. We apply bounded rationality theory and adaptive expectations theory to our model to describe outpatients’ behaviors on the basis of expectation and past experience. The results indicate that a plateau-dome scheduling pattern and a three-queue late arrival policy reduce waiting time more effectively than a uniform scheduling pattern and two commonly used late arrival policies.