Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a review of the state of the art in OR/MS

We provide a structured overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a review of relevant OR/MS articles for each planning decision. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to position the planning decisions, a taxonomy is presented. This taxonomy provides health care managers and OR/MS researchers with a method to identify, break down and classify planning and control decisions. Second, following the taxonomy, for six health care services, we provide an exhaustive specification of planning and control decisions in resource capacity planning and control. For each planning and control decision, we structurally review the key OR/MS articles and the OR/MS methods and techniques that are applied in the literature to support decision making

A survey of health care models that encompass multiple departments

In this survey we review quantitative health care models to illustrate the extent to which they encompass multiple hospital departments. The paper provides general overviews of the relationships that exists between major hospital departments and describes how these relationships are accounted for by researchers. We find the atomistic view of hospitals often taken by researchers is partially due to the ambiguity of patient care trajectories. To this end clinical pathways literature is reviewed to illustrate its potential for clarifying patient flows and for providing a holistic hospital perspective

Integrating nurse and surgery scheduling.

Scheduling; Surgery scheduling; International; Theory; Applications; Euro; Researchers;

Operating room planning and scheduling: A literature review.

This paper provides a review of recent research on operating room planning and scheduling. We evaluate the literature on multiple fields that are related to either the problem setting (e.g. performance measures or patient classes) or the technical features (e.g. solution technique or uncertainty incorporation). Since papers are pooled and evaluated in various ways, a diversified and detailed overview is obtained that facilitates the identification of manuscripts related to the reader's specific interests. Throughout the literature review, we summarize the significant trends in research on operating room planning and scheduling and we identify areas that need to be addressed in the future.Health care; Operating room; Scheduling; Planning; Literature review;

Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems Using Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization

This dissertation presents metaheuristic approaches in the areas of genetic algorithms and ant colony optimization to combinatorial optimization problems. Ant colony optimization for the split delivery vehicle routing problem An Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based approach is presented to solve the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP). SDVRP is a relaxation of the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) wherein a customer can be visited by more than one vehicle. The proposed ACO based algorithm is tested on benchmark problems previously published in the literature. The results indicate that the ACO based approach is competitive in both solution quality and solution time. In some instances, the ACO method achieves the best known results to date for the benchmark problems. Hybrid genetic algorithm for the split delivery vehicle routing problem (SDVRP) The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a combinatory optimization problem in the field of transportation and logistics. There are various variants of VRP which have been developed of the years; one of which is the Split Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (SDVRP). The SDVRP allows customers to be assigned to multiple routes. A hybrid genetic algorithm comprising a combination of ant colony optimization, genetic algorithm, and heuristics is proposed and tested on benchmark SDVRP test problems. Genetic algorithm approach to solve the hospital physician scheduling problem Emergency departments have repeating 24-hour cycles of non-stationary Poisson arrivals and high levels of service time variation. The problem is to find a shift schedule that considers queuing effects and minimizes average patient waiting time and maximizes physicians’ shift preference subject to constraints on shift start times, shift durations and total physician hours available per day. An approach that utilizes a genetic algorithm and discrete event simulation to solve the physician scheduling problem in a hospital is proposed. The approach is tested on real world datasets for physician schedules

Quantitative methods of physician scheduling at hospitals

Masteroppgave i industriell økonomi og informasjonsledelse 2010 – Universitetet i Agder, GrimstadStaff scheduling at hospitals is a widely studied area within the fields of operation research and management science because of the cost pressure on hospitals. There is an interest to find procedures on how to run a hospital more economically and efficient. Many of the studies about staff scheduling at hospital have been done about nurses, which work under common labor law restrictions. The goal of nurse scheduling is to minimize the staffing cost and maximizing their preferences. While the operation rooms are the engine of the hospitals, the physicians are the fueling for the hospitals. Without the physicians the patients would not be treated well and the hospital would not earn money. This thesis studies the physician scheduling problem, which has not been studied so widely as the nurse scheduling problem. A limited number of literatures about this theme have been studied to answer the main research question: How can we categorize physician scheduling at hospitals? Studying the physician rostering problem on the search for efficiency and cost savings is an intricate process. One can read a lot about this theme develop a lot of models; and shape and test different hypotheses. However, to increase efficiency it is wise to make a plan of information to consider. The categories searched for within this literature review are the level of experience, the planning period, the field of specialty, the type of shifts, whether cyclic or acyclic schedules are used and also which models and methods are used to solve this problem. Level of experience was first divided between residents - that are still under education, and physicians - which are fully licensed. Physicians are medical trained doctors that provide medical treatment rather than surgical treatment in hospitals. After medical school, they have accomplished between three to seven years of residential internship before they obtain their license. The residents are still under education and must therefore participate in a number of assorted activities and patient treatments during their resident period to acquire their license. This situation for resident makes scheduling unique as they are in a learning period and staffing the hospital at the same time. The planning period is a category that is divided in three levels; short-term which lasts up to a month, midterm which lasts from one month up to six months and a long-term that lasts from six months up to one year. The field of specialty is divided between the specialties of the physicians. In the numerous departments at a hospital, the work is distinctive from one another. A normal workday in a department that is only open during the day can be quite different from a workday in an emergency department. Working in a hospital is unlike other type of jobs. A hospital or at least different departments in a hospital are open all day long, every day of the year. As a result, the hospital must be staffed all the time. The need for staffing varies during the day, the day of week; and during the different seasons, due to the fluctuation of the demands. An example for a solution is a variety of broad types of shifts. Scheduling these shift types can be made cyclic or acyclic. Qualitative method has been used in this master’s thesis. The research question is a typically quantitative method starting with “how”. And to answer it, this thesis builds on a definite number of case studies. These case studies are limited to concern only about physician and resident scheduling problem written in English. These cases are primarily scientific articles and conference handouts. The cases are read - and interesting information is registered in a case study database. The findings have shown different use of planning period after the level of experience. Few studies have been done with short-term planning period; physicians are mostly scheduled for a midterm planning period, whereas residents are mostly scheduled with a long-term planning period. Most studies have scheduled physicians and residents for a day, evening and night shift, often in a combination with some kind of on-call shift. The field of specialty that is most studied is within emergency medicine. As the work in an emergency department is stressful, it is a complex task to make good schedules that satisfies the physicians and residents working there. Exact approaches are the most used modeling technique used for physician scheduling

Timetabling System for Medical Officer

The idea was proposed due to the issues that Medical Officer face which is unorganized and unstructured duty roster management. Thus, inspired by Prototyping – based methodology, Timetabling System for Medical officer was developed. This research studied about the scheduling algorithm, tools and knowledge required for system development and the development process involved. Feasibility study was carried out to ensure the timetabling system can be develop within scope, time and constrains. Beside the main constrains, other minor constrains such as cultural, technical and operational was included. Methodology analysis is carried out in order to choose the suitable methodology to develop the system. The prototype architecture is shown in the result and discussion. At the end of the report, few recommendations were listed for the betterment of the system. Besides that, it also can be used as the reference for the custodian to understand the current status of the project

PHYSICIAN SCHEDULING IN WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

In this project, a physician scheduling problem arising from the operations of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Hamad Women's Hospital in Qatar has been studied. The essence of the physician scheduling problem lies in assigning physicians with different experience levels to a set of predetermined shifts to achieve a set of clinical/non-clinical duties over a defined time horizon while considering a large set of conflicting rules and constraints including, and not limited, to hospital rules, physicians' requirements, shift coverage requirements, seniority-based workload rules, physicians' preferences, and workload balance aspects. The focus of this research project is to develop schedule for physicians (labor specialists and inpatient ward specialists) within Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Hamad Women's Hospital for on-call shifts (evening shift and night shift) beside regular working shift (morning shift) while respecting all hard constraints, satisfying a wide range of soft constraints as far as possible, and most importantly balancing the workload among the physicians. Both labor specialists and inpatient ward specialists are the main service providers in this hospital, and therefore optimizing their work-shifts assignments would indirectly assist in providing a better service to female patients in Qatar and would result in meeting both the hospital and the physicians' satisfaction. In this work, the problem is formulated as mathematical programming model and solved by AIMMS optimization software. Optimal physicians' schedules were generated, and the proposed model was tested on real data provided from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department in Qatar. A comparison between the resulting optimal schedules and the manual schedules used currently by the hospital was conducted. Then, a sensitivity analysis was performed in order to test the robustness of the obtained physicians' schedules of the proposed model. The proposed approach demonstrated that high quality schedules that satisfy all the constraints and mainly ensure balanced workload among the physicians can be generated with less time and effort required compared to the schedules prepared manually by the chief specialist in Women's Hospital