Chemotherapy Appointment Scheduling at BCCA Vancouver Centre

The Ambulatory Care Chemotherapy Unit (ACCU) at the BC Cancer Agency – Vancouver Centre delivers a large variety of outpatient chemotherapy treatments, with more than 14,000 patient visits per year.
Clinical complexity combined with high resource utilization and scheduling restrictions pose a series of appointment booking challenges, including: significant number of waitlisted patients, late appointment confirmation and fluctuating treatment schedules. These issues affect not only patients and staff, but also the coordination between the ACCU and other areas, such as pharmacy and laboratory.
Through simulation modelling we identified a series of process changes to improve the overall appointment booking process, and developed an optimization model to allocate appointments to nurses while balancing workload and complexity across the treatment schedule.
We present the analytical models and discuss the successes and challenges faced during the implementation of the process changes and scheduling tool.