Scheduling magnetic resonance Imaging examinations: an empirical analysis

This paper addresses the problem of scheduling Magnetic Resonance Imaging Examinations and has a twofold aim: investigating, via simulation, the long-term effect of the implementation of a First Come First Served-like heuristic; assessing the effectiveness, in terms of due date fulfilment, of the implementation of three managerial actions: cross training radiologists; reserving capacity to urgent pa-tients, reducing the number of inappropriate prescriptions. By means of a factori-al analysis, we demonstrate that cross-training radiologists and reducing the amount of inappropriate prescriptions, allow better matching the patient’s due-dates, than reserving capacity to urgent patients.