报告主题：Rethinking Appointment Scheduling: Addressing Counselor Burnout and Improving Patient Outcomes
报告人简介：高旖旎（Sarah Yini Gao）是新加坡管理大学李光前商学院运营管理系的助理教授。她的研究兴趣集中在将优化理论和数据分析应用于多个领域，包括医疗保健运营管理、供应链风险管理、人道主义运营，以及创新商业模式等主题。高教授的研究成果已发表在多本顶尖学术期刊上，如《管理科学》（Management Science）、《运筹学》（Operations Research）、《制造与服务运营管理》（Manufacturing & Service Operations Management）、《市场营销科学》（Marketing Science）、《生产与运作管理》（Production and Operations Management）和《INFORMS应用分析期刊》（INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics）等。她于2012年毕业于新加坡国立大学，获得工商管理和化学工程双学士学位，并于2017年在新加坡国立大学决策科学系（现更名为分析与运营系）获得管理学博士学位。
报告摘要：As demand for mental health services surges, counseling clinics face a hidden crisis: counselors, overwhelmed by both heavy task load and emotional strain, make scheduling decisions that unintentionally erode clinic efficiency and patient care. This study uncovers a surprising behavioral insight by analyzing detailed data from a university counseling clinic in Singapore. Under stress, counselors are more likely to schedule follow-up appointments, yet with longer delays, leading to fragmented treatment, higher no-show rates, and reduced access for new patients. Specifically, one-standard-deviation increase in task load raises the log-odds of scheduling a follow-up by 0.705, while one-standard-deviation increase in emotional load raises it by 1.167. In addition, these follow-ups are also increasingly delayed. One-standard-deviation increase in task load extends lead times by 9.912 days, while one-standard-deviation increase in emotional load delays the next appointment by 22.064 days. To break this cycle, we design and test a task-emotional-load-sensitive scheduling policy using discrete-event simulation, achieving better service access times and shorter patient treatment pathways, all without additional resources.
Our findings challenge conventional service models by introducing emotional load as a critical, yet overlooked, driver of system performance. They also extend behavioral operations management, showing how human stress responses, not just resource constraints, can undermine operational outcomes. This study offers a scalable, behaviorally-informed solution to enhance both counselor well-being and patient outcomes in emotionally intensive service environments.
