Title: Assigning patients to rooms in a private hospital in Kuwait

Authors: Humoud Alsabah; Majid M. Aldaihani; Ali Allahverdi

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969 Safat 13060, Kuwait ' Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969 Safat 13060, Kuwait ' Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969 Safat 13060, Kuwait

Abstract: The current practice of assigning an inpatient, in many private hospitals in Kuwait, to a room is based on full bed pooling. Full bed pooling results in wasting doctors valuable time by traveling long distances among patients, creating difficulties in moving equipment between patients, and making nurses' job harder since they are dealing with patients in different medical conditions. In this paper, we propose the following methodology to cluster rooms of similar medical conditions together. First, the number of rooms to be clustered together is determined using queuing theory. Then, departments are grouped together based on historical data. Next, integer programming is used to optimise the revenue and refine the results obtained from grouping. By applying the proposed policy, the hospital improves the doctors' efficiency, facilitates the movement of special equipment between patients and allows nurses to specialise in a certain medical specialty, which ultimately improves the service level.

Keywords: hospital rooms; room assignment; queuing theory; optimisation; private hospitals; mathematical programming; Kuwait; patient assignment; healthcare management; inpatients; full bed pooling; patient clustering; room clustering; patient similarity; medical conditions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2015.072314

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2015 Vol.22 No.3, pp.304 - 322

Received: 03 Jun 2014
Accepted: 19 Jun 2014
Published online: 09 Oct 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article