Planning and scheduling of semi-urgent surgeries

Zonderland, Maartje E. and Boucherie, Richard J. and Litvak, Nelly and Vleggeert-Lankamp, Carmen L.A.M. (2010) Planning and scheduling of semi-urgent surgeries. Health Care Management Science, 13 (3). pp. 256-267. ISSN 1386-9620

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Abstract:	This paper investigates the trade-off between cancellations of elective surgeries due to semi-urgent surgeries, and unused operating room (OR) time due to excessive reservation of OR time for semi-urgent surgeries. Semi-urgent surgeries, to be performed soon but not necessarily today, pose an uncertain demand on available hospital resources, and interfere with the planning of elective patients. For a highly utilized OR, reservation of OR time for semi-urgent surgeries avoids excessive cancellations of elective surgeries, but may also result in unused OR time, since arrivals of semiurgent patients are unpredictable. First, using a queuing theory framework, we evaluate the OR capacity needed to accommodate every incoming semi-urgent surgery. Second, we introduce another queuing model that enables a trade-off between the cancelation rate of eective surgeries and unused OR time. Third, based on Markov decision theory, we develop a decision support tool that assists the scheduling process of elective and semi-urgent surgeries. We demonstrate our results with actual data obtained from a department of neurosurgery.
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2010 The Author(s)
Faculty:	Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)
Research Group:	Stochastic Operations Research (SOR)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/72523
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10729-010-9127-6
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