A novel deterministic model for simultaneous weekly assignment and scheduling decision-making in operating theaters

Abstract

This paper studies a simultaneous weekly assignment and scheduling decisionmaking problem in operating theaters with elective patients. Because of limited recourses in hospitals, considering assignment and scheduling decisions simultaneously can help mangers exploit the available resources more efficiently and make the work-load uniformly distributed during the planning horizon. This procedure can significantly reduce hospital costs and increase satisfaction of patients and personnel. This paper formulates the mentioned problem as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) considering applicable assumptions like finite recovery beds and limitation of equipment. Since the problem is NP-hard, in order to solve large-scale instances and deal with the complexity, two effective and efficient algorithms are designed. Finally, as a practical case of study, a real data set of a surgery department of a big hospital in Iran (Aalinasab-e Tabriz) is used to solve the studied problem by the proposed algorithms.