%0 Journal Article
%T Operating Room Scheduling in Teaching Hospitals
%A Somayeh Ghazalbash
%A Mohammad Mehdi Sepehri
%A Pejman Shadpour
%A Arezoo Atighehchian
%J Advances in Operations Research
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/548493
%X 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. 1. Introduction Health care expenditures comprise a meaningful portion of the Gross Domestic Product in both developed and developing countries. Expenditure on healthcare in the UK as a percentage of the UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was estimated to be 8.4% in 2007, from which the public share was 69% [1]. Also, according to the statics released by the WHO (World Health Organization), health care expenditures in 2007 in Iran as a developing country were estimated to be about 6.4% of its GDP, and the portion covered by the government was about 46.8%. This fact makes health systems an important research field for industrial engineering and operations research to improve their operational efficiency. Operating rooms are simultaneously the largest cost centers and the greatest source of revenues for most hospitals. OR planning and scheduling is a key tool which can be useful to improve the productivity level of ORs and the related departments. Basically, there are three OR scheduling strategies commonly employed:(1)blocked scheduling strategy,(2)open scheduling strategy, and(3)modified scheduling strategy. Under a blocked scheduling strategy, individual surgeons or surgical groups are assigned times in a particular OR in a periodic (typically weekly or monthly) schedule. The planning within the framework of a blocked strategy consists of three stages. In the first stage, the OR capacity is divided among the surgeons, surgical groups, or departments on a strategic level. Then, a cyclic timetable called ¡°Master Surgical Schedule¡± is constructed that defines the number and type of operating
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aor/2012/548493/