Reducing Patient Tardiness: From Experiment to Implementation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gu, Wei; Li, Meng; Zhang, Shichen
• 署名单位: University of Science & Technology Beijing; University of Houston System; University of Houston; Tianjin University
• 刊物名称: PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1059-1478
• DOI: 10.1177/10591478251386162
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: appointment; time; arrival

摘要

In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of late penalties in reducing patient tardiness. Specifically, we evaluate two types of penalties: the last-place penalty (i.e., assigning late-arriving patients to the end of the queue) and the fixed-place penalty (i.e., moving late patients back by a fixed number of positions), under two conditions-absence of a time recommendation and presence of an explicit time recommendation. We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 9,573 patient visits at a partner hospital in Asia. Our findings indicate that the fixed-place penalty has no significant impact on patient tardiness. In contrast, the last-place penalty significantly reduces patients' late rate and encourages earlier arrival, particularly when no time recommendation is provided. When combined with a time recommendation, the last-place penalty continues to lower the late rate but does not further shift arrival times earlier. We also find that the last-place penalty is effective in increasing the patient's compliance with the time recommendation. We further implemented the last-place penalty in the partner hospital across a broader dataset involving 61,829 visits, yielding consistent results.