A Scenario-Based Approach for Operating Theater Scheduling Under Uncertainty

摘要

Elective operation scheduling significantly affects the financial health of a hospital and additional metrics important to stakeholders in an operating theater (OT) environment. In this research, we develop a novel scheduling formulation that explicitly considers the uncertainty in elective operation durations and also plans for potential randomly arriving urgent demands. Using a scenario-based modeling approach, the objective of this formulation is to maximize the expected profit associated with the OT schedule. Since the complexity of the problem is NP-hard, we develop a two-step, heuristic solution approach that allows us to solve practical sized instances in reasonable time. Experimentation shows that incorporating uncertainty via scenarios increases profit and OT utilization when compared to deterministic scheduling methods. Moreover, explicitly considering urgent arrivals results in a significant reduction in the time that patients of this type wait to receive service, with little impact on other key metrics.