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Improving Open Access Policy for Scheduling Outpatient Appointments

We present empirical and analytical results of our research that focuses on improving the Open Access (same day appointment) models for scheduling patients in a family practice setup. We show the value of dynamically incorporating the effect of anticipated behavior of patients on the expected load of the clinic. We find that many policies outperform OAP but when delay costs are introduced OAP is still robust when there is enough capacity at the clinic. We show that when both the capacity of the clinic is less than the demand and when the delay costs are significant, a simple forward looking policy does better than other current policies.