Wardenburg finds own ways of increasing efficiency
A recent study has suggested that overbooking at health clinics, such as Wardenburg Health Center, can have positive effects for both patients and the clinic.
Partners Dr. Stephen Lawrence and Linda LaGanga of the Leeds School of Business revealed that overbooking at health clinics “can be beneficial for patients and the clinic.”
Lawrence and LaGanga published their finding in the journal “Decision Sciences”. Their study received the journal’s Best Paper Award for 2007.
LaGanga, who is also the director of quality systems and operational excellence at the Mental Health Center of Denver, said the center provided the inspiration for the study. This was where, about five years ago, LaGanga started working on the study.
“What may be a better possibility is to figure out why we have no-shows and then reduce them,” LaGanga said. “We have an intensive project at the end of the month where we’re going to analyze that.”
Lawrence and LaGanga say clinics should overbook because some patients don’t show up.
“They can fill those idle times with patients,” Lawrence said.
The study focused on scheduling patients more often rather than on the practice of double booking two patients for one appointment time.
“What this really is doing is creating more appointment slots,” LaGanga said. “We’re shortening the time between appointments.”
According to the study, the usefulness of overbooking depends on a wide range of factors including the cost of missed appointments, the length of appointments, and the cost of overtime for overbooked health care providers.
“The higher the no-show rate, the more the beneficial it is, also the larger the clinic is,” LaGanga said.
LaGanga said the size of a clinic is measured by the number of people a provider sees and estimated the size of a large clinic as “more than 20 people in a morning or afternoon for one provider to see”.
Both researchers estimated a no-show rate of 20 percent as a point at which, according to Lawrence, “clinics will probably want to investigate overbooking,” adding that they “certainly do not recommend that all clinics overbook all the time.”
“Clinical people get nervous when they hear overbooking,” LaGanga said.
“We don’t do that, we don’t overbook,” said Gary Chadwick, assistant vice chancellor and director of Wardenburg Health Center. “A scheduled appointment is a scheduled appointment. When we have a no-show, we have a no-show.”
According to data from 2007, Wardenburg sees 1.5 to 1.8 people an hour on average. Chadwick says he wants Wardenburg to start seeing one person every 20 minutes by March of 2008.
Chadwick said he aims to gain efficiency by having more exam rooms and electronic medical records, not overbooking.
Chadwick pointed out that seeing one person every 20 minutes works out to 12 in a four hour period, far from LaGanga’s estimate of 20 people in a morning.
“We never want to become sort of the Wal-Mart of health care and deal in volume,” Chadwick said.
Chadwick was unable to provide any statistics on Wardenburg’s no-show rate, but estimated it to be less than ten percent. Wardenburg charges patients 30 dollars for every missed appointment.
Students say they feel disappointed with Wardenburg’s scheduling system.
Sarah Levy, a senior Spanish and business management major, estimated that she has been to Wardenburg 16 to 20 times with a typical wait time of 15 to 20 minutes.
Levy said she does not think overbooking would help.
“I had a 3:30 p.m. appointment and I didn’t see a doctor until 4:00,” Levy said.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Sam Dieter at Samuel.dieter@thecampuspress.com.
