TY - JOUR
T1 - Artificial Intelligence-Based Home Health Scheduling System Using Patient Acuity, Geographic Routing, Clinician Skill Mix, Visit Duration Estimates, and Risk of Missed Follow-Up Care
AU - Peter Novak
AU - Jana Svoboda
JF - Journal of Health Informatics and Digital Systems
JO - J. Health Inform. Digit. Syst.
SN - 3149-8973
Y1 - 2024
VL - 4
IS - 2
DO - 10.68159/d147765811
SP - 99
N2 - Home health agencies must assign clinicians to patients across geographically dispersed service areas while balancing patient needs, workforce qualifications, and operational efficiency. Scheduling decisions must account for clinical urgency, visit complexity, travel burden, and continuity of care. Manual scheduling cannot reliably integrate real-time acuity changes, dynamic travel conditions, clinician availability, and the risk of patients refusing or missing care. As a result, agencies may experience avoidable inefficiencies, delayed visits, fragmented follow-up, and increased coordinator workload. This article proposes an AI-based home health scheduling system that integrates patient acuity, geographic routing, clinician skill profiles, visit duration estimates, and missed-care risk prediction. The system is designed to generate adaptive daily schedules that can be revised as clinical and operational conditions change. The framework includes a patient acuity classifier, visit duration estimator, geographic routing engine, skill-mix matcher, missed-care risk predictor, and real-time scheduling dashboard. These components operate together to support clinically appropriate, geographically efficient, and operationally feasible visit plans. The proposed system would be expected to improve scheduling responsiveness, reduce unnecessary travel, better align clinician competencies with patient needs, and support proactive follow-up for patients at risk of missed care. Its value depends on integration with electronic health records, mobile workflows, coordinator oversight, and transparent decision support. An AI-based home health scheduling system provides a pathway toward a more responsive and coordinated home health operations model. By combining clinical prioritization with routing, workforce matching, and follow-up risk mitigation, such a framework could support both care quality and workforce efficiency.
UR - https://cirpublications.com/d147765811
ER -