Managing Waiting Times to Predict No-shows and Cancelations at a Children’s Hospital

Purpose: Since long waits in hospitals have been found to be related to high rates of no-shows and cancelations, managing waiting times should be considered as an important tool that hospitals can use to reduce missed appointments. The aim of this study is to analyze patients’ behavior in order to predict no-show and cancelation rates correlated to waiting times. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the data from a US children’s hospital, which includes all the appointments registered during one year of observation. We used the call-appointment interval to establish the wait time to get an appointment. Four different types of appointment-keeping behavior and two types of patients were distinguished: arrival, no-show, cancelation with no reschedule, and cancelation with reschedule; and new and established patients. Findings: Results confirmed a strong impact of long waiting times on patients’ appointment-keeping behavior, and the logarithmic regression was found as the best-fit function for the correlation between variables in all cases. The correlation analysis showed that new patients tend to miss appointments more often than established patients when the waiting time increases. It was also found that, depending on the patients’ appointment distribution, it might get more complicated for hospitals to reduce missed appointments as the waiting time is reduced. Originality/value: The methodology applied in our study, which combines the use of regression analysis and patients’ appointment distribution analysis, would help health care managers to understand the initial implications of long waiting times and to address improvement related to patient satisfaction and hospital performance.Peer Reviewe

Verb Phrase Inversion in fictional and non-fictional written english

In the last decades, full inversion constructions in which the subject follows the entire verb phrase in a declarative clause, as in"Beside him was a table full of well-known books", have been the subject of extensive research from a functional perspective. This paper is a further contribution to this line of research and offers a corpus-based analysis of a particular type of full inversion, namely verb phrase inversion (for example,"Standing grim and alone was the hulking eyesore of the territorial prison"), in written English texts. In recent work on inversion, there does not seem to be complete agreement as regards the distribution of verb phrase inversion in fiction and non-fiction. On the one hand, works by Heidrum Dorgeloh, David Denison and Douglas Biber et al. suggest that the construction is more frequent in fiction. On the other, studies by Rong Chen and Rolf Kreyer argue the opposite. This study will cast light on the lack of consensus regarding the distribution of verb phrase inversion in written fictional and non-fictional texts. It will be shown that fiction and non-fiction do not differ strongly in the number of verb phrase inversions but rather in the different types of verb phrase inversion used and in the pragmatic function that these constructions serve in discourse

Plan estratégico para mejorar la eficiencia terminal en cursos de matemáticas

Diferentes encuentros de Escuelas de Ingeniería han señalado al bajo índice de aprobación en los cursos de matemáticas, como uno de los factores que más inciden en el alto nivel de deserción en los primeros semestres y en la consecuente baja eficiencia terminal que tienen en sus licenciaturas. Derivado de ello, se ha planteado en estos foros la necesidad de implementar acciones que permitan incidir favorablemente en la disminución de estos problemas. Es en el marco de esta situación que el ITESM Campus Estado de México ha implantado en todas sus carreras de ingeniería un plan global que permita disminuir los efectos negativos de esta problemática. Se presenta el esquema general de un plan que sin disminuir el rigor académico, tiene como objetivo mejorar la efectividad del desempeño en los cursos de matemáticas

Introducción a la química orgánica : un enfoque curricular

This article examines several alternative approaches to a teaching curriculum in Organic Chemistry at the University level. A special attention is devoted to basic, general concepts and their organization in the introductory topics

Special issue: Industrial Engineering: Overcoming the crisis. CIO2012

This special issue of the Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management contains a selection of the papers that were accepted at the CIO2012 International Conference, developed in Vigo (Spain) under the motto “Industrial Engineering: Overcoming the Crisis”. CIO 2012 gives continuity to the series of annual Conferences initiated in September 1986 in La Rábida (Huelva, Spain). This conference is a very significant scientific event in Business & Operations Management and related areas. Researchers, academics, scientists and managers of diverse parts of the world have the opportunity to exchange experiences, new ideas and topics, in those fields related to Industrial Engineering. The 6th International Conference addresses the great multidisciplinary field formed by Industrial Engineering, from an international point of view. The papers here presented cover a number of consolidated and emerging topics of the conference scope and they may help readers to gain a deeper understanding of how Industrial Engineering could contribute to overcome the economic crisis. We would like to express our gratitude to all the authors, reviewers and the Organizing Committee for their enthusiastic work and magnificent support during CIO 2012

Searching for the roots of retardation : Spain in European perspective, 1500-1850

This paper investigates when did retardation begin in Spain and examines the evidence on economic performance over three centuries. In contrast to earlier estimates that focus almost exclusively on Castilian agriculture we look at trends in urbanization as a measure of economic activity outside agriculture and construct new measures of agricultural and total output at regional and national levels. We find distinctive long-run behaviour across Spanish regions that reject the identification between Castile and Spain. We also provide new output estimates for six Western European countries that allow placing Spanish performance in comparative perspective. Two main findings are highlighted. At the time of her imperial expansion Spain appears to have a relatively affluent nation and, by the late sixteenth century, her income per head was only below the Low Countries’ and Italy’s. The roots of Spanish retardation lie in the seventeenth century and deepened during the early nineteenth century.Preindustrial Spain, Europe, Urbanization, Agriculture, Retardation

A constructional analysis of obligatory XVS syntactic structures

The analysis of obligatory or formulaic XVS structures — as in “Here comes the sun” or “Now is the time to solve our problems” — has been neglected in the literature since it has been argued that there seems to be no linguistic variation involved in the use of these types of syntactic constructions. Here, I defend the view that obligatory XVS structures are productive, highly structured constructions which are worthy of serious linguistic investigation. On the basis of a corpus-based analysis of written and spoken texts, it is argued that the different obligatory XVS types distinguished in the literature are clear instances of constructions as understood in the Construction Grammar framework. Despite their formal and functional dissimilarities, the article shows that these XVS structures still relate to one another in systematic and predictable ways, and are in fact grouped in relation to a unit in the schematic network which is naturally most salient — the prototype — and form with it a family of nodes which are extensions from the prototype — in the system. In sum, the analysis here will show that obligatory XVS structures are constructions which form an interconnected, structured system or network and are best understood with reference to different forms of inheritance.The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (National Programme for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research; grant FFI2014-52188-P)

Relationship Amongst Technology Use, Work Overload, and Psychological Detachment from Work

Permanent connection to the work world as a result of new technologies raises the possibility of workday extensions and excessive workloads. The present study addresses the relationship between technology and psychological detachment from work resulting from work overload. Participants were 313 professionals from the health sector who responded to three instruments used in similar studies. Through PLS-SEM, regression and dependence analyses were developed, and through the bootstrapping method, significance of factor loadings, path coefficients and variances were examined. Results of the study corroborate a negative effect of technology use on psychological detachment from work and a positive correlation between technology and work overload. Additionally, there is a significant indirect effect of technology on psychological detachment from work as a result of work overload. Findings extend the literature related to the stressor-detachment model, and support the idea that workers who are often connected to their jobs by technological tools are less likely to reach adequate psychological detachment levels. Implications for the academic community and practitioners are discusse

Optical Transmittance Maximization in Superior Performance Tunnel Junctions for Very High Concentration Applications.

The light transmission through a tunnel junction in a multijunction solar cell depends on the optical properties and thickness of the whole solar cell layers stack, which configure the light absorption, reflection and interference processes taking place inside the semiconductor structure. In this paper the focus is put on the AlGaAs barrier layers of p++AlGaAs/n++GaAs and p++AlGaAs/n++GaInP tunnel junctions inserted into a GaInP/GaAs dualjunction solar cell. The aim is to analyze the effect of the thickness and Al-composition of these barrier layers on the light transmittance of the tunnel junction, using the bottom cell Jsc as the merit figure to appraise it. An intricate relation between this Jsc and the barrier layers parameters, caused by interferential reflectance, was observed. The importance of an appropriate optical design of the semiconductor structure was corroborated by a non-negligible gain in the bottom cell Jsc when choosing the appropriate barrier layers Al-compositions and thicknesses from a range of practical values for which the optical absorption is not the main contributor to the optical losses

The role of short periodic orbits in quantum maps with continuous openings

We apply a recently developed semiclassical theory of short periodic orbits to the continuously open quantum tribaker map. In this paradigmatic system the trajectories are partially bounced back according to continuous reflectivity functions. This is relevant in many situations that include optical microresonators and more complicated boundary conditions. In a perturbative regime, the shortest periodic orbits belonging to the classical repeller of the open map - a cantor set given by a region of exactly zero reflectivity - prove to be extremely robust in supporting a set of long-lived resonances of the continuously open quantum maps. Moreover, for step like functions a significant reduction in the number needed is obtained, similarly to the completely open situation. This happens despite a strong change in the spectral properties when compared to the discontinuous reflectivity case.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1604.0181