Handbook of Healthcare System Scheduling

A central theme of the book is increasing healthcare efficiency so that both the cost of care is reduced and more patients have access to care. This can be accomplished through reduction of idle time, lessening the time needed to provide services and matching resources to the needs where they can have the greatest possible impact on health. Within their chapters, authors address:

(1) Use of scheduling to improve healthcare efficiency.

(2) Objectives, constraints and mathematical formulations.

(3) Key methods and techniques for creating schedules.

(4) Recent developments that improve the available problem solving methods.

(5) Actual applications, demonstrating how the methods can be used.

(6) Future directions in which the field of research is heading.

Collectively, the chapters provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of models and methods for scheduling the delivery of patient care for all parts of the healthcare system.

Chapter topics include setting appointments for ambulatory care and outpatient procedures, surgical scheduling, nurse scheduling, bed management and allocation, medical supply logistics and routing and scheduling for home healthcare.