Title: A hospital admission planning model for operating room allocation under uncertain demand requirements

Authors: Phongchai Jittamai; Thirapan Kangwansura

Addresses: School of Industrial Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Suranaree University of Technology, 111 University Avenue, Muang District, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000, Thailand ' School of Industrial Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Suranaree University of Technology, 111 University Avenue, Muang District, Nakhon Ratchasima 30000, Thailand

Abstract: Operating room (OR) is known as one of scarce resources in the hospital system. The aim of this study is to obtain an admission schedule for the patient mix which improves overall operating room performance by minimising the shortfalls of the resource consumption to their target utilisations. The MILP formulation to generate this plan is developed by incorporating the uncertain demand requirements such as length of stay, emergency arrival, and the introduction of no-show condition into the model. By benchmarking with some known models, the analysis reveals that the proposed model yields a decreasing in gap of the usages of OR resources by considering the no-show. An admission plan created by the model indicates a better performance that results in fewer deviations between actual and target utilisations while satisfying the given restrictions. In application, the hospital admission planner may need a minor modification on the resource allocation levels to achieve the proper balance between the demands and capacities.

Keywords: demand management; capacity management; operating rooms; admission planning; mixed integer linear programming; MILP; uncertain demand; no-show; hospital admissions; operating room allocation; healthcare management; admission scheduling; patient mix; length of stay; emergency arrivals; resource allocation; scarce resources.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2016.074058

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2016 Vol.23 No.2, pp.235 - 256

Received: 16 Jun 2014
Accepted: 25 Sep 2014

Published online: 04 Jan 2016 *

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