An integrated rolling horizon approach to increase operating theatre efficiency

Demand for healthcare is increasing rapidly. To meet demand, we must improve the efficiency of our public health services. We present a mixed integer programming formulation that simultaneously tackles the integrated master surgical schedule and surgical case assignment problems under a modified block scheduling policy. That is, we allocate specialties, surgeons, and patients to surgical time blocks. We consider volatile surgical durations and non-elective arrivals while applying a rolling horizon approach to adjust the schedule after cancellations, equipment failure, or new arrivals on the waiting list. The model is based on a case study of an Australian public hospital with a large surgical department. The formulation includes significant detail and provides practitioners with a globally implementable model. We produce good feasible solutions in short amounts of computational time with a constructive heuristic and two hyper-metaheuristics. Using a rolling horizon schedule increases patient throughput and can help reduce waiting lists.