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A Local Search Algorithm for the Assignment and Work Balance of a Health Unit

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Service Oriented, Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing Systems for Industry of the Future (SOHOMA 2021)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 987))

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Abstract

In any healthcare service, guidelines regarding the number of staff and how to respond to patient demand must be followed. In Chile, to ensure there is 24/7 care, coordinators use a manual allocation model system called “The Fourth Shift” (TFS) to assign staff. The model has a four-day shift pattern which allocates 48 h of work and 48 h of rest. However, scheduling healthcare workers is always a challenge, as there are administrative, legal and individual constraints. A balanced shift assignment, meaning one that considers work hours and specific staff requests, has a significant impact on an overall work environment. To find a fair balance, this paper proposes a two-phase heuristic. The first is a constructive phase and the second is a local search phase. This paper simultaneously incorporates six Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and chance events aiming at leveling the workload for healthcare workers. The heuristics are validated with one-month shifts for a healthcare service with 12 nurses. The results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by disrupting the solution with five cumulative scenarios.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile

    Néstor Díaz-Escobar, Pamela Rodríguez, Verónica Semblantes, Robert Taylor & Gustavo Gatica

  2. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana - Cali, Cali, Colombia

    Daniel Morillo-Torres

Authors
  1. Néstor Díaz-Escobar
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  2. Pamela Rodríguez
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  3. Verónica Semblantes
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  4. Robert Taylor
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  5. Daniel Morillo-Torres
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  6. Gustavo Gatica
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Morillo-Torres .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UPHF, LAMIH UMR CNRS 8201, Polytechnic University Hauts de France, Valenciennes cedex 9, France

    Damien Trentesaux

  2. Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Theodor Borangiu

  3. Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics (CeDRI), Bragança, Portugal

    Paulo Leitão

  4. Faculty of Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia

    Jose-Fernando Jimenez

  5. Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de La Sabana, Chia, Colombia

    Jairo R. Montoya-Torres

Appendix

Appendix

Figures 8 and 9 show the nurse rostering found for the month studied taking into account the 5 events described in Sect. 5, highlighting the shifts worked (yellow).

Fig. 8.
figure 8

Shift assignment for the first and second week.

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Fig. 9.
figure 9

Shift assignment for the third and fourth week.

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Díaz-Escobar, N., Rodríguez, P., Semblantes, V., Taylor, R., Morillo-Torres, D., Gatica, G. (2021). A Local Search Algorithm for the Assignment and Work Balance of a Health Unit. In: Trentesaux, D., Borangiu, T., Leitão, P., Jimenez, JF., Montoya-Torres, J.R. (eds) Service Oriented, Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing Systems for Industry of the Future. SOHOMA 2021. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 987. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80906-5_14

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