Fewer intensive care unit refusals and a higher capacity utilization by using a cyclic surgical case schedule

Purpose: Mounting health care costs force hospital managers to maximize utilization of scarce resources and simultaneously improve access to hospital services. This article assesses the benefits of a cyclic case scheduling approach that exploits a master surgical schedule (MSS). An MSS maximizes operating room (OR) capacity and simultaneously levels the outflow of patients toward the intensive care unit (ICU) to reduce surgery cancellation. Materials and Methods: Relevant data for Erasmus MC have been electronically collected since 1994. These data are used to construct an MSS that consisted of a set of surgical case types scheduled for a period or cycle. This cycle was executed repetitively. During such a cycle, surgical cases for each surgical department were scheduled on a specific day and OR. The experiments were performed for the Erasmus University Medical Center and for a virtual hospital. Results: Unused OR capacity can be reduced by up to 6.3% for a cycle length of 4 weeks, with simultaneous optimal leveling of the ICU workload. Conclusions: Our findings show that the proposed cyclic OR planning policy may benefit OR utilization and reduce surgical case cancellation and peak demands on the ICU. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Cache as ca$h can

In this paper we consider the problem of placing proxy caches in a network to get a better performance of the net. We develop a heuristic method to decide in which nodes of the network proxies should be installed and what the sizes of these caches should be. The heuristic attempts to minimize a function of the waiting times in the network

A market-based framework for demand side flexibility scheduling and dispatching

\u3cp\u3eThe massive integration of renewable energy resources increases the uncertainty with respect to real-time operation of the electrical systems. This transition introduces new challenges and opportunities for various entities that are involved in energy generation, transmission, distribution and consumption such as system operators and market participants in the wholesale electricity market. The concept of Decentralized Energy Management or Demand Response is emerging as one of the main approaches to resolve the violations of the network operation limits and to increase the flexibility of the system. This paper introduces an interaction framework for trading flexibility among proactive end-users in an economically efficient way. It proposes new market participants with their roles and functionalities, that will operate alongside the existing ones to ensure market efficiency and to enable secure operation of distribution grids. The proposed framework consists of a main mechanism called ‘ahead-markets scheduling’. The ahead-markets scheduling includes two sub-mechanisms, day-ahead and intra-day, which are operated by a local flexibility market operator. The ahead-markets scheduling provides a trading platform that allows market participants to reflect their need(s) for flexibility and to monetize flexibility services in a fair and competitive manner. It enables flexibility trades which will eventually facilitate network management for the system operator.\u3c/p\u3