An Operations management approach for radiology services

This paper focus on the application of Operations Management techniques in the context of radiological and diagnostic imaging services provision. More specifically, the outpatient appointment scheduling problem for MRI diagnostic imaging services in a radiology clinics is approached and solved taking into account set-up time minimization. This is pursued trough the design of an innovative system for the on-line assignment of appointments for specific diagnostic imaging scans. An appointment rule, a patient classification and an heuristic procedure for the booking process are defined in order to better manage uncertainty and improve system performance. The proposed approach was validated on the case of a diagnostic centre of Alliance Medical, a primary multinational company in the field of diagnostic imaging services.