Patient scheduling in cancer treatment facilities

癌症治疗机构(CTF)的作用是为患有各种癌症并需要不同类型治疗的患者日益增长的需求提供服务。CTF管理人员在绩效方面面临几个挑战，例如获得专门服务的省级中央管理流程，该流程监控等待名单上的个别患者。在魁北克，省级放射肿瘤科的等待时间目标设定为4周(90%的患者)，这是从决定治疗到治疗第一天所经过的时间计算的。放射肿瘤科必须为治愈性和姑息性患者提供不同优先护理级别的服务。有治疗意图的患者占患者总数的70%。在涉及不同医疗专业人员的复杂治疗计划过程之后，将每天提供治疗，每周5天，从5次治疗到44次治疗。其余30%的患者是姑息性的，需要快速获得护理。病人流动中的错误是一个主要令人担忧的问题，因为它往往会导致治疗的延误和取消，这直接影响患者的健康。

The role of the Cancer Treatment Facility (CTF) is to provide service to an increasing demand from patients who suffer from divers forms of cancer and require different kinds of treatment. CTF administrators face several challenges regarding performance, such as provincial central management process for access to specialized services, which monitor individual patients on the waiting list. In Quebec, the provincial waiting time target for radiation oncology is set to 4 weeks (for 90% of the patients) and it is calculated from the time elapsed between the decisions to treat to the first day of treatment. A radiation oncology department must serve both curative and palliative patients with different access to care priority levels. Patient treated with a curative intent account for 70% of patients. After a complex treatment planning process involving different healthcare professionals, treatments will be delivered on a daily basis, 5 days a week from 5 to 44 treatments. The remaining 30% of the patients are palliative and need rapid access to care. Errors in patient flows are a major concern as it can often lead to delays and cancellations of treatment, which directly affects patients' health.