Journal ArticleDOI
Reducing emergency department waiting times by adjusting work shifts considering patient visits to multiple care providers
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This study introduces two iterative heuristic algorithms, which combine simulation and optimization models for scheduling the work shifts of the ED resources: physicians, nurses and technicians, which achieved an average reduction of between 20 and 64% in the total patient waiting time.Abstract:
Reducing Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding in the hope of improving the ED's operational efficiency and health care delivery ranks high on every health care decision maker's wish list. The current study concentrates on developing efficient work shift schedules that make the best use of current resource capacity with the objectives of reducing patient waiting time and leveling resource utilization as much as possible. The study introduces two iterative heuristic algorithms, which combine simulation and optimization models for scheduling the work shifts of the ED resources: physicians, nurses and technicians. The algorithms are distinctive because they account for patients being treated by multiple care providers, possibly over the course of several hours, often with interspersed waiting. In such instances, patient arrival time is not a good indicator of when the various care providers are needed. The algorithms were tested using a detailed simulation based on data from five general hospital EDs. A pat...read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a structured review of the state of the art in OR/MS
Peter J. H. Hulshof,Nikky Kortbeek,Nikky Kortbeek,Richard J. Boucherie,Erwin W. Hans,Piet J. M. Bakker +5 more
TL;DR: A comprehensive overview of the typical decisions to be made in resource capacity planning and control in health care, and a structured review of relevant articles from the field of Operations Research and Management Sciences (OR/MS) for each planning decision.
Journal ArticleDOI
Operations research/management contributions to emergency department patient flow optimization: Review and research prospects
TL;DR: In this paper, the influence of OR/OM on improving the performance of hospital Emergency Departments (EDs) has been discussed, including improving a wide range of processes involving patient flow from the initial call to the ED through disposition, discharge home, or admission to the hospital.
Journal ArticleDOI
Operations Research/Management Contributions to Emergency Department Patient Flow Optimization: Review and Research Prospects
TL;DR: This work reviews approximately 350 related papers to demonstrate the influence of OR/OM in EDs, and assist both researchers and practitioners with the Or/OM techniques already available to optimize ED patient flow.
Journal ArticleDOI
A stochastic optimization model for shift scheduling in emergency departments
TL;DR: This paper addresses the personnel scheduling problem in an ED in order to optimize the shift distribution among employees and minimize the total expected patients’ waiting time using a stochastic mixed-integer programming model and a sample average approximation approach.
Journal ArticleDOI
Optimization of hospital ward resources with patient relocation using Markov chain modeling
TL;DR: A mathematical model is presented to solve the problem of ensuring sufficient beds to hospital wards by re-distributing beds that are already available to the hospital by statistically found to reflect occupancy of hospital beds by patients as a function of how hospital beds are distributed.
References
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