Tactical Operating Theatre Scheduling: Efficient Appointment Assignment

Abstract

Finding an appointment for elective surgeries in hospitals is a task that has a direct impact on the optimization potential for offline and online daily surgery scheduling. A novel approach based on bin packing which takes into account limited resource availability (e.g. staff, equipment), its utilization, clinical priority, hospital bed distribution and surgery difficulty is proposed for this planning level. A solution procedure is presented that explores the specific structure of the model to find appointments for elective surgeries in real time. Tests performed with randomly generated data motivated by a mid size hospital suggest that the new approach yields high quality solutions.