2/22/18 | 4:15pm | E51-345
Reception to follow.

Mor Armony

Professor of Operations Management
NYU, Stern School of Business 

Abstract: Patient no-shows is a serious issue that significantly complicates capacity management in outpatient care. In this talk we examine various aspects of this challenge and propose ways to alleviate the negative effects of patient no-shows. The levers that we consider include panel sizing, appointment availability, appointment duration, and appointment scheduling. Our results indicate that an open access policy of “meet today’s demand today” is optimal under many realistic scenarios. We also establish that it is optimal to have the doctor serve patients in a critical loading regime. Finally, we find that when patients’ no-show behavior is strategic, it may be optimal for the clinic to limit their available capacity.

The talk is based on the following papers:

1. “Joint Panel Sizing and Appointment Scheduling in Outpatient Care”, jointly with Christos Zacharias.
2. “Asymptotically Optimal Appointment Schedules with Customer No-Shows”, jointly with Rami Atar and Harsha Honnappa.
3. “Strategic Capacity Management in Outpatient Care with No-shows and Rescheduling”, with Yunchao Xu and Nan Liu

Bio:  Mor Armony is professor of operations management and the George and Edythe Heyman Faculty Fellow at New York University Stern School of Business. Professor Armony teaches courses in operations management and in service operations.
Professor Armony's primary research areas of interest include management of patient flow in healthcare, optimization of customer experience in contact centers, and general stochastic modeling of various operations. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Management Science, Operations Research, and Queueing Systems.
Before joining NYU Stern, Professor Armony served as a consultant for Lucent Technologies and for AT&T. She also developed mathematical models for the prediction of financial indexes at Eventus, Israel.
Professor Armony received her Bachelor of Science in mathematics and statistics and her Master of Science in statistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She also received a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy in engineering-economic systems and operations research from Stanford University.