MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING FOR THE SCHEDULING OF ELECTIVE PATIENTS IN THE OPERATING ROOM DEPARTMENT

The Health Sciences Centre (HSC) in Winnipeg handles a large portion of the surgical patients in the province of Manitoba, along with Northwestern Ontario, and Nunavut. After an extensive analysis of the surgical patient flow at the facility, it became evident that the Operating Room (OR) scheduling system is one of the major sources of artificial variation in this flow, affecting both the pre and postoperative departments. A two-stage multi-objective mathematical model is proposed for the scheduling of elective cases. Using data obtained from all elective cases actually scheduled during a five week period at the HSC, five weekly OR schedules are generated using the first stage of the proposed mathematical model. The results of the model’s schedules are compared to current schedules employed at the HSC, to verify its effectiveness and assess the improvements that can be achieved.