Surgical block scheduling in a system of hospitals: an application to resource and wait list management in a British Columbia health authority

Health Care Management Science volume 10, pages269–282(2007)Cite this article

Abstract

Scheduling surgical specialties in a medical facility is a very complex process. The choice of schedules and resource availability impact directly on the number of patients treated by specialty, cancellations, wait times, and the overall performance of the system. In this paper we present a system-wide model developed to allow management to explore trade-offs between OR availability, bed capacity, surgeons’ booking privileges, and wait lists. We developed a mixed integer programming model to schedule surgical blocks for each specialty into ORs and applied it to the hospitals in a British Columbia Health Authority, considering OR time availability and post-surgical resource constraints. The results offer promising insights into resource optimization and wait list management, showing that without increasing post-surgical resources hospitals could handle more cases by scheduling specialties differently.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. Fraser Health Authority, 10334 152A Street, Surrey, BC, V3R 7P8, Canada

    Pablo Santibáñez

  2. Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Mall, Vancouver V6T 1Z2, BC, Canada

    Mehmet Begen & Derek Atkins

Authors
  1. Pablo Santibáñez
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  2. Mehmet Begen
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  3. Derek Atkins
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Correspondence to Pablo Santibáñez.

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Santibáñez, P., Begen, M. & Atkins, D. Surgical block scheduling in a system of hospitals: an application to resource and wait list management in a British Columbia health authority. Health Care Manage Sci 10, 269–282 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-007-9019-6

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Keywords

  • Health care
  • Hospitals
  • Operating rooms
  • Wait list management
  • Surgical scheduling
  • Programming
  • Optimization
  • Integer
  • Applications