Book the Course or Book the Week?

Intake Wait and Course Continuity under Three Booking Policies in a Two-Cabinet Phototherapy Unit

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions models a hospital phototherapy unit's two cabinets as forty pattern-slots and compares rolling weekly booking, whole-course block-booking and block-booking with reserved make-up rows by simulation over a two-year horizon. Block-booking raises the intake wait without reducing mid-course gaps, since 97 per cent of gaps span a unit closure or a week the patient declared away; two reserve rows a day cut the share of courses with a gap by about a quarter while the median wait rises from about five days to eighteen.

@misc{slop_rf731q,
  author       = {Vigdis Emenike and Bram Ntuli},
  title        = {Book the Course or Book the Week?: Intake Wait and Course Continuity under Three Booking Policies in a Two-Cabinet Phototherapy Unit},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.rf731q},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-booking-policy-for-rf731q/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}