[Overbooking in an outpatient healthcare facility in the Brazilian Unified National Health System].

Management issues like resource optimization, cost cuts, quality gains, and improvements in care have become increasingly important and are essential to the sustainability of healthcare organizations. This study analyzed the efficiency of public outpatient care, where the high rate of patient no-show leads to low use of resources, while paradoxically the demand for medical care clearly exceeds the supply. A quantitative and descriptive approach analyzed the use of "overbooking" to reduce the effects of patient no-show in a public outpatient clinic. Using statistical and mathematical methods and based on patient and appointment data collected from a survey, an interesting comparison was made between levels of overbooking and the respective resource utilization rates and service levels for each scenario. The findings point to important gains in efficiency, thus demonstrating the potential of increasing the number of services in the same asset base.