Slot Optimization

About this feature

This feature helps Imaging Operations teams to be data-driven in their approach to right-sizing appointment slots. By leveraging the Quantivly data layer, your team can create analyses and simulations to empower confident decisions and build consensus towards change.

Retrospective analysis of appointment slot sizes

Setting & filtering your analysis

By default, Slot Optimization charts a single protocol (the one with the highest projected time saved). The protocol list is sorted by impact by default (you can also sort it by exam volume or alphabetically), and you can select up to 5 to compare.

Click the settings icon to open the Settings panel.

Settings :

‘Buffer’ - In this data visualization, Buffer time gets added on to Exam duration. You can set it to ‘No buffer’ or use your preferred buffer time setting.
‘Group By’ - here, you can select the protocol naming field that should be used to group exams. Protocol Naming (RIS protocol, AI protocol, DCM protocol, etc.) options are customer-specific and depend on your Quantivly implementation.
‘Historical Data’ - Use this to set the date range for the past exams that you want to analyze: Last 90 days, Last 6 months, Last 12 months, or Custom range.
‘New Appointment Duration’ - The duration (in minutes) of a new patient appointment, used to convert minutes saved into new appointments. By default, it is set to 30 minutes.
‘Revenue per Appointment’ - This parameter is used to model the revenue of a given appointment slot duration change. By default, it is set to USD 1,000.00 per appointment. Read the ‘Simulating impact of potential changes’ section below for more details
‘Slot Granularity’ - The slot size your scheduling system supports (5, 10, 15 or 30 min). See ‘Refining your analysis’ below.

Looking for an overview of where your main opportunities are? Use Q-Lens, our AI data analysis interface, to prioritize the analysis. In addition, our Customer Experience team can work with you to identify opportunities for slot right-sizing, to improve utilization and on-time start of exams.

Filters :

Filter	Description
	Use this filter to narrow down the list of scanners for which exams are included in the visualization
Weekdays, Body Section, Sedation, Patient Class	Available from the Filter menu, alongside Scanners. Use them to include only exams on specific weekdays, for specific body sections or patient classes, or with or without sedation.
	This filter may take a different name, depending on how you choose to Group By the information in Settings panel : ‘Study Descriptions’, ‘RIS Protocol’, etc. You may choose up to 5 protocols in this analysis.

The visualization refreshes every time you change a parameter or filter

Note : in the charts, only exams that are linked to an appointment are plotted.

Breaking down data for each scanner

Below each plot, you will notice a button.

Click on it to show a series of charts for each scanner, allowing for deeper analysis.

Investigating outliers

Click on any bar in the bar chart to display a table view of all exams contained in that bar.

‘See details’ will take you to the Examination Details page (in a new browser tab)

Simulating impact of potential changes

Choosing a new duration

Use the slider bar to select your desired appointment duration.

As you set a new duration, the ‘Projected Impact’ panel will update

Simulated variables

At the top of the screen, you will find the following panel:

Use the filter to define the time period on which the impact is simulated (weekly, monthly, annually)
- Note that a month is 30 days

Simulated variable	Definition
Interventions	The number of protocols currently selected, i.e. the number of appointment slot changes being simulated.
Minutes Saved	If you were to set a shorter appointment for a given study or protocol, you would save time: this represents the cumulative time saved, per period (week, month, year) A positive value means the the new configuration will effectively save time compared to what used to be The formula used is `Past Appointment duration - MAX(Exam duration, New Appointment duration)` Exam duration includes Buffer time, taking into account the value chosen in the settings Here are some examples of how this formula works: This calculation is applied to each exam in the dataset, then summed for the dataset and normalized per time period (week, month, year)
New appointments	The total number of minutes saved is converted into a number of new appointments you could fit in. It uses the configurable New Appointment Duration (default 30 minutes, set in the settings panel) to convert the minutes saved into new appointments.
Additional Revenue	This converts the number of new appointments into a revenue number, based on the Revenue per Appointment value in the Settings panel. By default, it assumes that each new appointment is equivalent to $1000.00 in revenue.
Risk of Overruns	Using your parameter of ‘new appointment duration’, we will provide the revised probability of exams running over their appointment slots. This takes into account Buffer time 100% means that all exams would run over their appointment slot. 0% means that no exams would run over their appointment slot

Saving a view

We recommend that you create a view to return to your analysis. Read this article for more information

You can share a URL with other Quantivly users. Once they click it, they will see the same visualization that you are seeing.

Additionally, you can export a PDF document directly from the app.

Refining your analysis

A few controls help you focus the simulation:

Custom date range — under Historical Data (in the Settings panel), pick a preset (Last 90 days, Last 6 months, or Last 12 months) or choose Custom range to set your own start and end dates. The custom date picker also offers This fiscal year and Previous fiscal year, based on your organization’s fiscal year.
Sort by impact — sort the protocol list by Impact (scaled to the selected period, e.g. “Impact Monthly”) to surface the biggest opportunities first; the highest-impact protocol is pre-selected by default.
Slot granularity — set the slot size your scheduling system supports (5, 10, 15, or 30 min); the suggested slot and overall impact round up to it.