Operating room scheduling in teaching hospitals

Abstract

Operating room scheduling is an important operational problem in most hospitals. In this paper, a novel mixed integer programming (MIP) model is presented for minimizing Cmax and operating room idle times in hospitals. Using this model, we can determine the allocation of resources including operating rooms, surgeons, and assistant surgeons to surgeries, moreover the sequence of surgeries within operating rooms and the start time of them. The main features of the model will include the chronologic curriculum plan for training residents and the real-life constraints to be observed in teaching hospitals. The proposed model is evaluated against some real-life problems, by comparing the schedule obtained from the model and the one currently developed by the hospital staff. Numerical results indicate the efficiency of the proposed model compared to the real-life hospital scheduling, and the gap evaluations for the instances show that the results are generally satisfactory. Copyright © 2012 Somayeh Ghazalbash et al.