Skip to main content
Log in

Patient scheduling in hemodialysis service

  • Published:
Journal of Combinatorial Optimization Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The patient scheduling presents a number of operations management challenges in hemodialysis service center. The homogeneity of the break time between treatments, satisfying the patients preferences on time, space and equipment and the multi-function dialysis devices make for an interesting and complex scheduling problem that could benefit from computerized decision support. In this paper, patient scheduling problem in hemodialysis service is formulated as a synthetic-objective optimization model combined with several criteria on minimizing the gross utilization cost of devices, the number of night treatment, satisfying the patients preferences and the equilibrium of the devices. A basic heuristics and a rollout algorithm based on the heuristics are developed for solving the problem where three levels of treatment schedule sets are constructed one by one. The performances of the rollout algorithm and the basic heuristics are compared on the real cases. Computational results show that significant improvement of patients degree of satisfaction can be achieved with the rollout algorithm while simultaneously considering to reduce the number of night shifts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ahmadi-Javid A, Jalali Z, Klassen KJ (2017) Outpatient appointment systems in healthcare: a review of optimization studies. Eur J Oper Res 258(1):3–34

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Azadeh A, Baghersad M, Farahani MH, Zarrin M (2015) Semi-online patient scheduling in pathology laboratories. Artif Intell Med 64(3):217–226

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bertazzi L (2012) Minimum and worst-case performance ratios of rollout algorithms. J Optim Theory Appl 152(2):378–393

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bertsekas DP, Tsitsiklis JN, Wu C (1997) Rollout algorithms for combinatorial optimization. J Heuristics 3(3):245–262

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Bruecker PD, Bergh JVD, Belin J, Demeulemeester E (2015) Workforce planning incorporating skills: state of the art. Eur J Oper Res 243(1):1–16

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Cayirli T, Veral E (2003) Outpatient scheduling in health care: a review of literature. Prod Oper Manag 12(4):519–549

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Condotta A, Shakhlevich NV (2014) Scheduling patient appointments via multilevel template: a case study in chemotherapy. Oper Res Health Care 3(3):129–144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guerriero F (2008) Hybrid rollout approaches for the job shop scheduling problem. J Optim Theory Appl 139(2):419–438

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Guerriero F, Mancini M (2005) Parallelization strategies for rollout algorithms. Comput Optim Appl 31(2):221–244

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Guerriero F, Mancini M, Musmanno R (2002) New rollout algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. Optim Methods Softw 17(4):627–654

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Guerriero F, Pisacane O, Rende F (2015) Comparing heuristics for the product allocation problem in multi-level warehouses under compatibility constraints. Appl Math Model 39(23–24):7375–7389

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta D, Denton B (2008) Appointment scheduling in health care: challenges and opportunities. Iie Trans 40(9):800–819

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hadidi A (2015) A survey of approaches for university course timetabling problem. Comput Ind Eng 86(C):43–59

    Google Scholar 

  • Holland J (1994) Scheduling patients in hemodialysis service centers. Prod Inventory Manag J 35(2):76–80

    Google Scholar 

  • Hulshof PJH, Kortbeek N, Boucherie RJ, Hans EW, Bakker PJM (2012) Taxonomic classification of planning decisions in health care: a structured review of the state of the art in or/ms. Health Systms 1(2):129–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jha V, Garcia-Garcia G, Iseki K, Li Z, Naicker S, Plattner B, Saran R, Wang AY, Yang CW (2013) Chronic kidney disease: global dimension and perspectives. Lancet 382(9888):260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mccollum B, Schaerf A, Paechter B, Mcmullan P, Lewis R, Parkes AJ, Gaspero LD, Qu R, Burke EK (2010) Setting the research agenda in automated timetabling: the second international timetabling competition. Informs J Comput 22(1):120–130

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Meskens N, Duvivier D, Hanset A (2013) Multi-objective operating room scheduling considering desiderata of the surgical team. Decis Support Syst 55(2):650–659

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ogulata S, Mokoyuncu CE, Koyuncu M (2009) A simulation approach for scheduling patients in the department of radiation oncology. J Med Syst 33(3):233–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peña MT, Proaño RA, Kuhl ME (2013) Optimization of inpatient hemodialysis scheduling considering efficiency and treatment delays. Dissertations and Theses—Gradworks (43)

  • Petrovic S, Leung W, Song X, Sundar S (2006) Algorithms for radiotherapy treatment booking. In: Proceedings of the 25th workshop of the UK planning and scheduling special interest group (PlanSIG2006), pp 105–112

  • Pillay N (2016) A review of hyper-heuristics for educational timetabling. Ann Oper Res 239(1):3–38

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Pinedo ML (2012) Scheduling: theory, algorithms, and systems. Springer, Berlin

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Power A, Duncan N, Goodlad C (2009) Management of the dialysis patient for the hospital physician. Postgrad Med J 85(1005):376–381

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qu R, Burke EK, Mccollum B, Merlot LTG, Lee SY (2009) A survey of search methodologies and automated system development for examination timetabling. J Sched 12(1):55–89

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Riff MC, Cares JP, Neveu B (2016) Rason: A new approach to the scheduling radiotherapy problem that considers the current waiting times. Exp Syst Appl 64:287–295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riise A, Mannino C, Lamorgese L (2016) Recursive logic-based benders decomposition for multi-mode outpatient scheduling. Eur J Oper Res 255(3):719–728

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Saremi A, Jula P, Elmekkawy T, Wang GG (2015) Bi-criteria appointment scheduling of patients with heterogeneous service sequences. Exp Syst Appl Int J 42(8):4029–4041

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomoyuki T, Takeshi N, Hideki K, Kosaku N, Tadao A, Makoto H, Tadayuki K, Kazutaka K, Hidehisa S, Hideki H (2015) Cost-effectiveness of maintenance hemodialysis in japan. Ther Apher Dial 19(5):441–449

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uyar AS, Ozcan E, Urquhart N (2013) Automated scheduling and planning from theory to practice. Stud Comput Intell 21(5):42–43

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Wu Y, Dong M, Zheng Z (2014) Patient scheduling with periodic deteriorating maintenance on single medical device. Comput Oper Res 49(49):107–116

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Xu N, Mckee SA, Nozick LK, Ufomata R (2008) Augmenting priority rule heuristics with justification and rollout to solve the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Comput Oper Res 35(10):3284–3297

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Yan C, Tang J, Jiang B, Fung RYK (2015) Sequential appointment scheduling considering patient choice and service fairness. Int J Prod Res 53(24):7376–7395

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yao ZM, Bai LJ, Meng HY (2012) Design and application of an automatic scheduling optimized algorithm for hemodialysis machine. Meas Control Technol 31(9):51–55

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Wang H, Wang X (2015) Patients scheduling problems with deferred deteriorated functions. J Comb Optim 30(4):1027–1041

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Zhong L, Luo S, Wu L, Xu L, Yang J, Tang G (2014) A two-stage approach for surgery scheduling. J Combin Optim 27(3):545–556

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is supported partially by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST: 2017KFYXJJ178 and the Yellow Crane Talents Foundation of Wuhan, China.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhenyuan Liu.

Appendix A Schedules set in the first level

Appendix A Schedules set in the first level

The number of

Schedules in the first level

The number of

Schedules in the first level

dialysis

dialysis

2 in 2 weeks

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

4 in 2 weeks

1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0

0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1

3 in 2 weeks

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

5 in 2 weeks

1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

6 in 2 weeks

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0

6 in 2 weeks

0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1

1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0

0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1

0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0

 

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, Z., Lu, J., Liu, Z. et al. Patient scheduling in hemodialysis service. J Comb Optim 37, 337–362 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-017-0232-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-017-0232-z

Keywords

Navigation