Overbooking in Endoscopy: Ensure No-One is Left Behind!

With the growing pressure on physicians to maximize efficiency and enhance the value of clinical practice, overbooking endoscopy schedules appears to hold promise, if implemented strategically, to enhance patient access for endoscopy procedures. Overbooking is a practice that has been routinely utilized by the airline industry to offset losses incurred by passengers not showing for flights, and there is evidence emerging in the medical literature that a similar approach can be utilized in health care. In the context of endoscopy practice, a key aspect of implementing overbooking successfully is the ability to precisely and accurately predict which patients will have a high likelihood of not attending for their procedure, thereby allowing their slots to be double booked while minimizing the likelihood of overburdening the practice with excessive workload. Despite the potential efficiencies that can be realized with overbooking in health care, it remains important not to neglect the needs of those patients who predictably and consistently fail to attend for health-care appointments.