BACKGROUND Missed appointments are associated with an increased risk of hospitalization and mortality. Despite its widespread prevalence, little data exists regarding factors related to appointment non-adherence among hypertensive African-Americans. OBJECTIVE To investigate factors associated with appointment non-adherence among African-Americans with severe, poorly controlled hypertension. ...

The fixed-route traveling salesman problem with appointments, simply the appointment problem, is concerned with the following situation. Starting from home, a traveler makes a scheduled visit to a set of sponsors and returns home. If a sponsor in the route cancels her appointment, the traveler returns home and waits for the next appointment. We are interested in finding a way of dividing the to...

Great pressure has recently been put on clinicians by hospital managers and politicians to reduce waiting times. Unfortunately, the emphasis of current initiatives on waiting lists tends to be on reducing the wait for surgery rather than the waiting time for an appointment at an outpatient clinic. We report the potential dangers of long waiting times for a routine outpatient appointment at a ur...