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

Counting differentials with fixed residues

We investigate the count of meromorphic differentials on the Riemann sphere possessing a single zero, multiple poles with prescribed orders, and fixed residues at each pole. Gendron and Tahar previously examined this problem with respect to general residues using flat geometry, while Sugiyama approached it from the perspective of fixed-point multipliers of polynomial maps in the case of simple poles. In our study, we employ intersection theory on compactified moduli spaces of differentials, enabling us to handle arbitrary residue conditions and provide a complete solution to this problem. We also determine interesting combinatorial properties of the solution formula

Measuring churner influence on pre-paid subscribers using fuzzy logic

In the last decades, mobile phones have become the major medium for communication between humans. The site effect is the loss of subscribers. Consequently, Telecoms operators invest in developing algorithms for quantifying the risk to churn and to influence other subscribers to churn. The objective is to prioritize the retention of subscribers in their network due to the cost of obtaining a new subscriber is four times more expensive than retaining subscribers. Hence, we use Extremely Random Forest to classify churners and non-churners obtaining a Lift value at 10% of 5.5. Then, we rely on graph-based measures such as Degree of Centrality and Page rank to measure emitted and received influence in the social network of the carrier. Our methodology allows summarising churn risk score, relying on a Fuzzy Logic system, combining the churn probability and the risk of the churner to leave the network with other subscriber

Adherence of model molecules to silica surfaces: first principle calculations

The adherence of model molecules to  crystal SiO2 surfaces is studied from first principle calculations at the DFT level. Adsorption energies are calculated which follow the experimental threads obtained elsewhere (Rivera et al.,2013). We study the quantum nature of the electronic charge transfer between the surface and the molecules, showing the localized and delocalized patterns associated to the repulsive and attractive case respectively.Fil: Nuñez, Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina. Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica. Gerencia del Area de Investigaciones y Aplicaciones no Nucleares. Gerencia de Fisica (CAB); ArgentinaFil: Prado, Miguel Oscar. Comision Nacional de Energia Atomica. Gerencia del Area de Investigaciones y Aplicaciones no Nucleares. Gerencia de Fisica (CAB); Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Area de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentin

Mechanical Properties of Glass Microspheres

AbstractGlass microspheres are used for both medical and industrial applications among others. It is of interest to develop simple experimental techniques to characterize the mechanical properties of different sets of glass microspheres.In this study we performed the Point Load Strength Tests (PLST) onalumino-borosilicate and yttrium-aluminosilicate glass microspheres samples, with sizes between 50 and 200μm obtained by the In Flame Spherodization Method (IFSM). We measured the breaking load of each microsphere within a set, and usedWeibull statistics to determine the mechanical parametersvaluesof each set of microspheres.We found for 75μm microspheres, that those made of alumino-borosilicate glass have a Weibull modulus of 4.0±0.1 and for the yttrium-aluminosilicate microspheres the Weibull modulus is3.3±0.1. Scale parameter valuesare 710±20 and 390±20MPa respectively. These results show that the PLST technique and Weibull analysis together constitute a valuable tool formechanical characterization ofglass microspheres samples

Mental health without mirrors. A non-descriptivist approach to mental health and the intervention with people with delusions

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Psicología. Departamento de Psicología Biológica y de la Salud. Fecha de Lectura: 16-09-202

Toward a route detection method base on detail call records

In the last years, smartphones have become the major device for communication enabling Telco operators to capture subscribers’ whereabouts. This location information allows computing eostatistics to study transportation systems, traffic jams, origin-destination matrix, etc. The first task to accomplish the aforementioned objectives is to detect routes that people use to go from A to B. Thus, in the present effort, we propose a method to extract automatically routes from CDR data relying on clustering and community detection algorithms

Editorial

Peer Reviewe

Education and media in Mexico: A historical perspective

El presente artículo, esbozo de una investigación más amplia, pretende analizar la transmisión y contenidos de los medios de comunicación y estudiar cómo se asumen éstos por parte de los receptores y observar también si los valores educacionales tradicionales son transmitidos o reforzados (o simplemente no lo son) por dichos medios de comunicación en su papel de educadores sociales. El periodo a estudiar se ha delimitado entre los años 1968 y 1981/82.The present article, an outline of a deeper research project, intends to analyze media transmission and their contents, to study how they are assumed by receivers, and to observe if traditional educational values are transmitted or reinforced (or not) by media in their role as social educators. Our study period was delimited between 1968 and 1981/82