mojtaba hamid

The efficient management of nursing personnel is of vital importance in a hospital’s environment comprising a vast share of the hospital’s operational costs. In the nurse scheduling problem (NSP), the target is to allocate shifts to the nurses in order to satisfy the hospital’s demand during the planning horizon by considering different objective functions. This paper presents a multi-objective mathematical model with the aims of reducing the costs that the hospital is supposed to pay, maximizing nurses’ satisfaction, and balancing the workload of nurses. Nurses’ preferences for working in particular shifts and weekend off are considered in this model. In order to solve the model, a two-step procedure is used. In the first step, to show the applicability of the proposed model, a real case study is provided and is solved using augmented ε-constraint method. Then, the best solution is selected among Pareto solutions using data analysis envelopment (DEA). Finally, several analyses are performed to develop managerial implications.

Surgical theater is one of the most expensive hospital sources that a high percentage of hospital admissions are related to it. Therefore, efficient planning and scheduling of the operating rooms (ORs) is necessary to improve the efficiency of any healthcare system. Therefore, in this paper, the weekly OR planning and scheduling problem is addressed to minimize the waiting time of elective patients, overutilization and underutilization costs of ORs and the total completion time of surgeries. We take into account the available hours of ORs and the surgeons, legal constraints and job qualification of surgeons, and priority of patients in the model. A real-life example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the model and is solved using ε-constraint method in GAMS software. Then, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is employed to obtain the best solution among the Pareto solutions obtained by ε-constraint method. Finally, the best Pareto solution is compared to the schedule used in the hospitals. The results indicate the best Pareto solution outperforms the schedule offered by the OR director.