Linear programming approach for doctors scheduling in a hospital

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to propose an optimization model for achieving efficient scheduling of doctors attached to any hospital. In the recent literatures, a wide variety of different methodologies and models have been developed pertaining to various scheduling problems. These include Mathematical Programming, Meta-Heuristic Methods and Constraint Satisfaction Techniques. First, an optimization model is formed by formulating the objectives and the constraints of the problem mathematically. Further, the real doctors’ scheduling problem is formed as a 0-1 Integer Linear Programming problem. To solve the problem, Branch-and-Bound technique is applied by using the optimization software package LINGO. Finally, the solution to the optimization problem is converted to a regular doctors’ schedule. The methodology is illustrated by preparing a weekly schedule for a private hospital in Sri Lanka which has 32 doctors of the same grade.