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Economic and Quality Scheduling for Effective Utilization of Operating Rooms

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Abstract

Under the constraints of limited medical resources and severe competition among hospitals, administrators have begun to pay attention to the opportunities of cost reduction and quality improvement in hospital management, in order to find methods to increase hospital revenue and improve service quality. The operating room should be one of the most important sources of hospital income, yet it is both costly to run and constrictive to inpatient flow. Successful hospital management necessitates the construction of cost-effective and quality operating room scheduling. This paper attempts to model the scheduling problem in the form of mathematical programming with the objective being to minimize the deviation between the total operation time and the total available time in operating rooms. Urgent revisions to the model in consideration of such factors as doctor’s availability, outpatient consulting hours and unfavorable surgery hours can be achieved in a timely manner. With the present approach, surgical procedures can start punctually, inpatient waiting time for surgery and length of stay can be reduced, and staff morale can be enhanced. These improvements will result in cost reduction, and increased hospital revenue without sacrificing the quality of medical care.

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Acknowledgments

This research was carried out in the Design, Quality, and Productivity Laboratory (DQPL) at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management of Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC and supported by Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital (KVGH) of the Republic of China under the Grant No.VGHKS NSU No.97-003 and VGHKS abroad research plan with Grant No. 97-12-30 (0970010962). I would also like to thank my research assistants, Jung-Huang Kuo, Wei-Hao Ciou, and Wei-Shang Liou, Master’s students at the I.E. Department, for their contributions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, Republic of China

    Angus Jeang

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital (KVGH), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China

    An-Jen Chiang

  3. Institute of Human Resource management, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Republic of China

    An-Jen Chiang

  4. School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

    An-Jen Chiang

  5. Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Cancer Center, Stanford, CA, USA

    An-Jen Chiang

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  1. Angus Jeang
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Correspondence to An-Jen Chiang.

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Jeang, A., Chiang, AJ. Economic and Quality Scheduling for Effective Utilization of Operating Rooms. J Med Syst 36, 1205–1222 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9582-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9582-0

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