A model for managing patient booking in a radiotherapy department with differentiated waiting times

Figures & data

Table I.  The patient case-mix in 2007 is shown. The number of patients is the actual number of patients treated in 2007. The average number of appointments and the new starts rates are based on the actual number of patients treated. The minimum number of working days from booking to start of RT is the time from referral to ready-to-start for the various patient categories whereas the maximum time limit is determined by the maximum allowed waiting time for each patient category.

			Average no. of appointments per day	Average no. of new starts per day	No. of working days from booking to start of RT
Category	i	No. of pts	Ai	Sri	Min-tpi	Max–twmax,i
Head and neck and rectal cancer	1	216	31.0	0.9	1	3
Palliative patients	2	1350	15.6	5.4	1	10
Cervical cancer	3	38	4.1	0.2	5	15
All other curative patients except breast and prostate patients	4	473	42.8	1.9	5	20
Prostate patients	5	111	17.3	0.4	40	100
Breast patients RT+ chemotherapy	6	153	14.7	0.6	35	100
Breast patients RT only or RT + homone treatment	7	136	13.1	0.5	20	100
Total		2477	138.6	9.9

Figure 1.  The number of appointments booked per day versus date is shown as triangles for a) April 25, 2008 and b) May 19, 2008. The dashed line shows the LLC, the solid line the MBC and the dashed dotted line the RT capacity versus date.

Figure 2.  The number of appointments booked per day versus date is shown as triangles for a) December 18, 2007, b) December 28, 2007, c) January 7, 2008, and d) January 14, 2008. The LLC is shown as a dashed line, the MBC is shown as a solid line and the capacity is shown as a dashed dotted line.

Figure 3.  The number of appointments booked per day versus date is shown as triangles for a) January 21, 2008 and b) February 12, 2008. The LLC is shown as a dashed line, the MBC is shown as a solid line and the capacity is shown as a dashed dotted line.