Abstract. More efficient use of resources and improved quality of services is needed in the health care sector, in order to meet the challenges of aging populations coupled with rising quality expectations due to technological advances and desire to cap or reduce budgets. In healthcare, complex decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational levels are coupled across organizational boundaries, with interdependency between plans that share many of the same resources and infrastructure. Decision support tools from Operations Research have for decades been successfully applied to complex resource management problems in other industries. While such tools are needed in the health sector, they are no panacea but maybe one of the most promising approach to ease their strain. A wide-spread application of such tools will increased efficiency at hospitals and patients will experience more streamlined coordination of activities, improved predictability and regularity-getting a higher service levels and ultimately better quality of health care services
