Title: Optimising patient revisit intervals for virtual and office appointments in chronic care

Authors: Xiao Yu; Armagan Bayram

Addresses: Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Dearborn, MI 48128, USA ' Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Dearborn, MI 48128, USA

Abstract: Virtual appointments are cost-effective alternatives to the traditional office appointments where patients receive the required care remotely. Virtual appointments are used to complement or substitute for office appointments due to the limitations on the availability of office appointments. They improve patients' access to care and provide convenient care for the patients. However, it is challenging to integrate these appointments with traditional appointments and to decide the visit frequency of patients for different types of appointments since these appointments have different effectiveness. In this paper, we consider a clinic that provides both virtual and office appointments in a chronic care setting. We develop an open migration network to simulate the patients' flow in the clinic system and build mathematical models to investigate the optimal follow-up rates (i.e., revisit intervals) for both virtual and office appointments. With the model developed, more systematic decisions can be made to determine follow-up rates.

Keywords: virtual appointments; revisit intervals; chronic care; migration network model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2023.129136

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2023 Vol.43 No.3, pp.363 - 383

Received: 11 Jun 2020
Accepted: 04 Apr 2021
Published online: 22 Feb 2023 *

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