Surgical Suites Scheduling with Integrating Upstream and Downstream Operations

Surgical operations are a critical function for hospitals because they are responsible for almost two-thirds of all profits. Hence, medical resources associated with surgical operations and operation rooms (OR) should be utilized efficiently. Conducting an overall plan for the allocation of medical resources and capacities used in surgical operations is complicated because numerous types of resources are involved in an OR scheduling problem. Furthermore, the upstream and downstream operations of a surgery, such as the number of beds for preoperative examination and intensive care unit, also significantly affect OR schedule performance. The objective of OR scheduling is to minimize the overtime cost of surgical operations and the idle cost of ORs. Using the concept of OR suites and modes, we construct a mixed integer linear programming model by considering surgical resources and the corresponding upstream and downstream operations. A five-stage heuristic method is proposed to solve large-scale problems effectively and efficiently. A numerical study is conducted, and the results show that the proposed method can reduce the total cost of managing operation rooms and improve the quality of surgical services.