Beyond the Queue: Rethinking the Waitlist Dynamics for Faster Access to MRIs

We examine Ontario's MRI waitlist system, which prioritizes patients based on their initial diagnosis. With the backlog surge due to COVID-19, this policy is linked to patients having to undergo more extended and invasive medical treatment.

We address this issue by developing a multi-class queueing model with multiple servers (MRIs) and time-varying arrivals (referrals). Using this model, we examine how to better utilize existing capacity to expedite the processing of the backlog.

To this end, we formulate an optimal control problem and derive closed-form solutions to determine how capacity should be optimally allocated to several patient classes. Using a large dataset, we then demonstrate the effectiveness of our policies by comparing them to several benchmarks.

About the speaker:

Adam Diamant is an associate professor of Operations Management and Information Systems at the Schulich School of Business and a York Research Chair in Managing AI-Driven Technologies in Health Care.

His research has been published in premier journals including Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, and Journal of Operations Management.