A decision support system for surgery sequencing at UZ Leuven's day-care department.

In this paper, we test the applicability of a decision support system (DSS) that is developed to optimize the sequence of surgeries in the day-care center of the UZ Leuven Campus Gasthuisberg (Belgium). We introduce a multi-objective function in which children and prioritized patients are scheduled as early as possible on the day of surgery, recovery overtime is minimized and recovery workload is leveled throughout the day. This combinatorial optimization problem is solved by applying a pre-processed mixed integer linear programming model. We report on a 10-day case study to illustrate the performance of the DSS. In particular, we compare the schedules provided by the hospital with those that are suggested by the DSS. The results indicate that the DSS leads to both an increased probability of obtaining feasible schedules and an improved quality of the schedules in terms of the objective function value. We further highlight some of the major advantages of the application, such as its visualization and algorithmic performance, but also report on the difficulties that were encountered during the study and the shortcomings that currently delay its implementation in practice, as this information may contribute to the success rate of future software applications in hospitals.Decision support system; Optimization; Visualization; Health care application;

Vermarktung von Management Games am Beispiel von COREmain Hospital

Vermarktung von Management Games am Beispiel von COREmain HospitalDue to increasing health care cost E-Learning Tools are a widely known as opportunity for finding saving potentials in the health care system. But they are also used as approach in higher education. This diploma thesis is about the marketing strategy of the E-Learning tool COREmain Hospital. The University of Vienna is not the only target for the game. Other target groups are the Austrian Government, Consulting Companies or hospital administrations. The marketing strategy is important for distributing information’s about the management game to all targets groups. The thesis discusses the basics of the game, of marketing versus nonprofitmarketing and the strategies of other international used management games

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;

Causes of Surgery Cancellation in Iran: A Systematic Review

Background: Cancellation of surgical procedures is one of the biggest challenges in hospitals throughout the world and it is important as it increases patients' stress, expenses and wastage of time, and prolongs the duration of hospitalization of patients. The aim of this study was to review literature related to reasons of surgery cancellation in Iran. Methods: This systematic review was conducted from March to Sep. 2014. The keywords including cancellation, delay, postpone, cancelled surgery, surgery operation and Iran were searched in international search engines including Pubmed, Scopus, ProQust and Google scholar and Persian indexing websites of SID, Magiran and Iranmedex. All articles related to cancelled operations in Iran, written in English or Persian (from Jan 1, 2004 until Sep 31, 2014) were collected. Then, those articles which contained any of the selected keywords in their titles or abstracts were compiled, and others were excluded. At last, a check list including title of article, time and location of study, sample size and location and cancellation cause was designed for final assessment. Results: A total of 646 records were found in 7 selected databases of which 13 articles met the criteria for inclusion in this study. The main cases of surgery cancellation were related to operating room and hospital, anesthesia, patient's non-clinical problems, the surgeon and clinical problems. Conclusions: Adoption of strategies for on-time initiation of surgical procedures, identification of patients' underlying problems and the appropriate process of hospital admission can be effective in reducing the rate of cancelled operations

An Optimization Model for Operating Room Scheduling to Reduce Blocking Across the Perioperative Process

Operating room (OR) scheduling is important. Because of increasing demand for surgical services, hospitals must provide high quality care more efficiently with limited resources. When constructing the OR schedule, it is necessary to consider the availability of downstream resources, such as intensive care unit (ICU) and post anaesthesia care unit (PACU). The unavailability of downstream resources causes blockings between every two consecutive stages. In this paper we address the master surgical schedule (MSS) problem in order to minimize blockings between two consecutive stages. First, we present a blocking minimization (BM) model for the MSS by using integer programming, based on deterministic data. The BM model determines the OR block schedule for the next day by considering the current stage occupancy (number of patients) in order to minimize the number of blockings between intraop and postop stages. Second, we test the effectiveness of our model under variations in case times and patient arrivals, by using simulation. The simulation results show that our BM model can significantly reduce the number of blockings by 94% improvement over the base model. Scheduling patient flow across the 3-stage periop process can be applied to work flow scheduling for the s-stage flow shop shop production in manufacutirng, and also Smoothing patient flow in periop process can be applied to no-wait flow shop production

دلایل لغو عمل جراحی در ایران: یک مطالعه مرور نظام مند

مقدمه: لغو عمل جراحی از بزرگترین دشواری­های بیمارستانی در سراسر دنیا است. لغو اعمال جراحی به علت ایجاد استرس، صرف وقت، هزینه­های زیاد و اشغال تخت­های بیمارستان از اهمیت ویژه­ای برخوردار است. این تحقیق به منظور بررسی مستندات و شواهد موجود در خصوص علل لغو عمل جراحی در ایران انجام شد. روش‌ها: این مرور نظام­مند در نیمه اول سال 1393 انجام شد. کلید واژه­های لغو، تعویق، تأخیر، کنسل، عمل جراحی و ایران، در پایگاه­های داده­ای بین­المللی Google Scholar، ­PubMed، ProQuest، Scopusو پایگاه­های داده­ای ایرانی SID، IranMedex، Magiran جستجو شدند. علاوه بر بانک­های اطلاعاتی، جستجوی دستی نیز انجام شد. در این مطالعه ابتدا تمام مقالات مرتبط با لغو اعمال جراحی در ایران به زبان فارسی و انگلیسی (از ژانویه سال 2004 تا 31 سپتامبر سال 2014) گردآوری شد. تمام مقالاتی که در عنوان یا چکیده آن­ها کلیدواژه­های ذکر شده موجود بود، وارد لیست اولیه شدند و سایر مقالاتی که در مورد علل لغو اعمال جراحی نبود، حذف شدند. سپس چک لیستی شامل عنوان مقاله، مکان مطالعه، زمان مطالعه، مکان نمونه­گیری، حجم نمونه و علل لغو اعمال جراحی به منظور ارزیابی نهایی تهیه شد. نتا‌یج: از مجموع 7 پایگاه داده­ای، 646 مقاله مورد بررسی اولیه قرار گرفت که از این میان، 13 مقاله واجد شرایط لازم برای ورود به مطالعه بودند. از مهم­ترین عوامل مؤثر بر لغو اعمال جراحی عبارت بودند از: علل مربوط به اتاق عمل و بیمارستان، بیهوشی، مشکلات غیر بالینی بیمار، جراح و مشکلات بالینی. بحث و نتیجه‌گیری: اتخاذ تدابیری جهت شروع به موقع اعمال جراحی، شناسایی مشکلات زمینه­ای بیمار و انجام فرآیند صحیح پذیرش بیمار می­تواند در کاهش لغو اعمال جراحی مؤثر باشد

Teaching operations planning at the undergraduate level

It is often challenging to make decisions about how to teach planning within an undergraduate operations management module. This article defines and compares the two standard options available to instructors: (a) the traditional “technical” approach or (b) the “conceptual” or “conversational” approach. Through a reflective action research methodology, this article examines modules taught with both approaches. From a learning theory standpoint, the conclusion is that the technical approach does a good job of staging learning in manageable chunks, but students rarely end up with an insightful understanding of planning systems. The conceptual approach offers more opportunities for learning, but these opportunities can only be taken advantage of if students engage and have enough knowledge prerequisites. To overcome the limitations of these two approaches, this article describes a more robust active learning approach based on using substitute experiences