According to Press Ganey’s Physician’s Office and Outpatient Pulse 2007, a widely used report
in health care industry, on time appointment performance in ambulatory surgery is one of the
most important factors with respect to patient satisfaction. However, how to best optimize the
O.R. scheduling has been a long standing, highly debated issue within the healthcare industry.

Assisted by HMC, a regional medical center in northwest Kansas, we tried to utilize data mining
methods to improve the performance of their O.R. scheduling. HMC has continually experienced
frequent appointment time over-runs as the actual surgery often takes longer than booked by
the hospital’s scheduling software. As part of quality improvement effort, HMC desires to
implement a report which would identify the surgery appointments that are likely to run longer
than 15 minutes over the scheduled time. Using such a report, the O.R. personnel can optimize
the daily schedule by moving appointments that are likely to have overruns to operating rooms
with spare capacities during the day, thus reducing the bull-whip effect to the entire O.R
operation.