45 research outputs found
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
Stochastic Goal Programming and a Metaheuristic for Scheduling of Operating Rooms
Health care systems in Canada provide benefits to patients but have issues with costs and wait lists. Long wait lists negatively affect patients’ welfares. This in turn can increase costs because conditions can develop into more complicated ones over time. Operating rooms in a hospital are responsible for a significant portion of both costs and benefits; therefore, finding ways to use them more efficiently can reduce both the waste of tax dollars and the lengths of wait lists and can improve patients’ welfares. In this research, a stochastic weighted goal programming model is proposed to perform elective surgery scheduling under uncertainty of both surgical durations and patient lengths of stay. The model generates a Master Surgical Schedule that schedules surgical teams in operating room blocks in a way that minimizes four objectives, which are the deviations between the targeted number of surgeries and the actual number of surgeries performed, the deviations between the targeted number of hours for surgeries and the actual number of hours used for surgeries, the maximum expected number of patients in the recovery ward over the course of the planning horizon, and the difference between the maximum and minimum expected numbers of patients in the recovery ward over the course of the planning horizon. In addition, the impact of cancellations on the schedule is taken into account. A simulated annealing metaheuristic is developed to find near-optimal solutions. Discrete event simulation is used for validation and to demonstrate the system of operating rooms and recovery ward beds to relevant stakeholders in the health care sector
Solving Multi-objective Integer Programs using Convex Preference Cones
Esta encuesta tiene dos objetivos: en primer lugar, identificar a los individuos que fueron víctimas de algún tipo de delito y la manera en que ocurrió el mismo. En segundo lugar, medir la eficacia de las distintas autoridades competentes una vez que los individuos denunciaron el delito que sufrieron. Adicionalmente la ENVEI busca indagar las percepciones que los ciudadanos tienen sobre las instituciones de justicia y el estado de derecho en Méxic
Fuelling the zero-emissions road freight of the future: routing of mobile fuellers
The future of zero-emissions road freight is closely tied to the sufficient availability of new and clean fuel options such as electricity and Hydrogen. In goods distribution using Electric Commercial Vehicles (ECVs) and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (HFCVs) a major challenge in the transition period would pertain to their limited autonomy and scarce and unevenly distributed refuelling stations. One viable solution to facilitate and speed up the adoption of ECVs/HFCVs by logistics, however, is to get the fuel to the point where it is needed (instead of diverting the route of delivery vehicles to refuelling stations) using "Mobile Fuellers (MFs)". These are mobile battery swapping/recharging vans or mobile Hydrogen fuellers that can travel to a running ECV/HFCV to provide the fuel they require to complete their delivery routes at a rendezvous time and space. In this presentation, new vehicle routing models will be presented for a third party company that provides MF services. In the proposed problem variant, the MF provider company receives routing plans of multiple customer companies and has to design routes for a fleet of capacitated MFs that have to synchronise their routes with the running vehicles to deliver the required amount of fuel on-the-fly. This presentation will discuss and compare several mathematical models based on different business models and collaborative logistics scenarios