Flexible schedules for patient pickup or drop-off

Product Used: Route Optimization API

Background

A non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) provider frequently transports patients to a dialysis center in a metropolitan area. Due to the high demand for appointments and traffic congestion, it’s challenging to get all patients to the center exactly within their scheduled time windows. Rigid time windows leave no room for delays during peak traffic conditions leading to unfulfilled appointments and constant stress for drivers to complete routes without any flexibility.

Problem Statements

The NEMT provider wants to overcome:

Rigid Scheduling: Strict appointment time windows meant that if a driver couldn’t reach the patient within the designated time due to traffic or delays, the task would remain unassigned.
Unfulfilled Appointments: Some patients, especially those with back-to-back appointments, couldn’t be accommodated because there wasn’t enough time in the schedule to fit them in.

Solution

NextBillion.ai Route Optimization API has a feature to provide additional duration beyond the original time window, which the optimizer can use, if needed, to fulfill the patient pickup or drop-off. Although there is an associated penalty for utilizing this additional time, this feature is quite useful in congested urban areas, where strict adherence to time windows might leave many pickups or drop-offs unassigned otherwise.

Flexible time windows

Use the max_visit_lateness parameter to specify an additional duration beyond the original time window, which the optimizer can use, if needed, to fulfill patient pickup or drop-off. It allows the NEMT provider to proactively plan for worse than expected traffic conditions, other unforeseen delays, and enjoy the ability to serve tight appointment schedules to maintain high service efficiency.

As an example, in order to set an additional duration of 15 mins to fulfill tasks beyond stipulated time windows.

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"options": {
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       "constraints": {
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       "max_visit_lateness": 900
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}
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}

Manage tight schedules

On busy days when there can be multiple back-to-back or overlapping appointments to fulfill, the NEMT provider can leverage flexible time windows in order to maintain high service standards. The provider can proactively add acceptable delays for such appointments. The optimizer will make use of this additional window available for each task, to successfully schedule more pickups and drop-offs as opposed to keeping them unassigned due to rigid schedules.

In the Sample API Request we use a patient pickup schedule with multiple overlapping time_windows to showcase how max_visit_lateness helps manage such scenarios.

Sample API request and response

Following is a complete sample JSON request that we built using Route Optimization API to enable flexible time schedules into the input request.

Sample API request

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curl --location 'https://api.nextbillion.io/optimization/v2?key=<your_api_key>' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{...}'

Sample Route Optimization API response

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{
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    "description": "Curbside Route Optimization Example",
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    "result": "{...}",
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    "status": "Ok",
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    "message": ""
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}

From the above solution we can observe how the NEMT provider can effectively manage overbooked schedules and account for unforeseen delays using flexible schedules, ensuring that more patients receive timely transportation while maintaining a high level of service.