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A mathematical optimization model for efficient management of Nurses’ Quarters in a teaching and referral hospital in Hong Kong
Conclusion The use of operations research methodologies is useful in enhancing workflow efficiency and resource utilization in healthcare. Through the employment of a data-driven and evidence-based methodology, buy-in from stakeholders could be obtained so that a new and enhanced workflow could be successfully implemented. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - November 2, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A mathematical optimization model for efficent management of Nurses’ Quarters in a teaching and referral hospital in Hong Kong
Conclusion The use of operations research methodologies is useful in enhancing workflow efficiency and resource utilization in healthcare. Through the employment of a data-driven and evidence-based methodology, buy-in from important stakeholders could be obtained so that a new and enhanced workflow could be successfully implemented. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 10, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Aggregate capacity planning for elective surgeries: A bi-objective optimization approach to balance patients waiting with healthcare costs
This study uniquely formulates and solves a bi-objective healthcare aggregate capacity planning problem to simultaneously minimize the number of patients waiting for an elective surgery and the associated costs. The multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem of allocating the Operations Room (OR) capacity to different surgical specialties is solved by the Non Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA II). This gives a range of Pareto plans that have important managerial repercussions because it may help set and analyze the impact of various waiting guarantees. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 4, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Patient-based nurse rostering in home care
The objective is to assign as few different nurses as possible to each patient. Although this continuity is important for quality of care, it is hardly addressed in literature. In this paper, we elaborate a mid-term home care rostering problem (HCR) that fits the requirements our partner. It implies the assignment of nurses to weekly recurring patient-visit-tours under consideration of the aforementioned continuity of care. We propose different measures of continuity, which are used in five novel MIP formulations, each incorporating all hard planning constraints. We evaluate the models by means of 45 generated instances wi...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 29, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Waiting time computation for blood collection sites
Publication date: Available online 25 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): S.P.J. van Brummelen, W.L. de Kort, N.M. van Dijk As blood donations are provided on a voluntary non-remunerated basis, blood donors should be treated as user-friendly as possible. Delays and waiting times within blood collection sites (donor centers) should thus be kept at acceptable levels. Waiting times are not incorporated directly other than by practical experience. A more rigorous approach is required. An analytic waiting time computation is therefore investigated to compute waiting times as a function...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 25, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A two-phase heuristic approach to multi-day surgical case scheduling considering generalized resource constraints
Publication date: Available online 25 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): Wim Vancroonenburg, Pieter Smet, Greet Vanden Berghe The present contribution focuses on the problem of assigning and scheduling surgical cases in rooms of an operating theatre, in order to maximize efficiency. The aim is to schedule as many surgical cases in as few operating rooms as possible, within regular operating theatre opening hours and under limited resource availability. This work generalizes many surgical case scheduling aspects considered in the literature and in practice by means of a unified re...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 25, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Pathway variation analysis (PVA): Modelling and simulations
In this study, we propose a novel methodology, called pathway variation analysis (PVA), to identify, simulate and analyse variations from the patient care pathways. PVA method includes patient ward level journey dataset and qualitative staff interviews to simulate patient variations. The proposed methodology had been applied to the stroke care services of a hospital, which increased their key performance from 73% to 84.97%. A PVA methodology is proposed which simulated patient diversions from the care pathway by modelling hospital operational parameters, assessing the accuracy of clinical decisions and performance measures...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 19, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

STOPGAP: Stroke patient management and capacity planning
The objective is to ensure that capacity constraints are met, while moving as few patients as possible. While our theoretical solution and implementation focus on the specifics of the Belfast Trust, the methodology is clearly generalizable to other hospital settings in different settings. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 17, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Operations research models and methods in the screening, detection, and treatment of prostate cancer: A categorized, annotated review
Publication date: Available online 16 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): Stuart Price, Bruce Golden, Edward Wasil, Brian Denton According to data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program in the United States, approximately 15% of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetimes. Over the past 15 years, the battle against prostate cancer has been joined by researchers and practitioners who have used a wide variety of operations research (OR) models and methods to investigate decisions involving screening, detection, and treatment of pr...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 17, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

An online optimization approach for the Real Time Management of operating rooms
We report an accurate computational analysis proving the effectiveness of the proposed approach to the RTM. Finally, we demonstrate the capability and the flexibility of our approach extending our hybrid model to deal with emergency surgeries and different trained surgery teams. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 17, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Evaluating the impact of a simulation study in emergency stroke care
Publication date: Available online 16 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): Thomas Monks, Mark Pearson, Martin Pitt, Ken Stein, Martin A. James Very few discrete-event simulation studies follow up on recommendations with evaluation of whether modelled benefits have been realised and the extent to which modelling contributed to any change. This paper evaluates changes made to the emergency stroke care pathway at a UK hospital informed by a simulation modelling study. The aims of the study were to increase the proportion of people with strokes that undergo a time-sensitive treatme...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 17, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Developing a simulation model for the patient pathway of cutaneous malignant melanoma
In this study, a system dynamic simulation model for a part of the patient pathway of cutaneous malignant melanoma was developed. A model was built that produced quantified out-put of diagnosed patients staged by severity, using System dynamic simulation. Data from the Swedish Melanoma Registry were combined with current scientific results and used in this analytical tool. Solutions to how these results are adapted into a simulation are described. The simulation model has the ability to generate alternative quantitative output of patient health in a population corresponding to realistic interventions in health care program...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 15, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Compliance with national guidelines for stroke in Radiology
Publication date: Available online 14 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): Izabela Komenda, Vincent Knight, Hannah Mary Williams Stroke is a medical emergency, and if patient outcomes are to be optimised there should be no delays in accessing treatment. This project focuses on the application of Operational Research methodology to investigate how a hospital can comply with the revised computerised tomography (CT) scanning guidelines for stroke. Such guidelines, released by the Royal College of Physicians recommend a 50% reduction in time from hospital admission to report of a CT he...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 14, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

ORAHS 2014-for better practices in health care management
Publication date: Available online 14 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): M. Eugénia Captivo, Inês Marques, Margarida Moz (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 14, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

The scope for improvement in hyper-acute stroke care in Scotland
Publication date: Available online 11 September 2015 Source:Operations Research for Health Care Author(s): Evin Uzun Jacobson, Steffen Bayer, James Barlow, Martin Dennis, Mary Joan MacLeod Thrombolysis is associated with reduced disability for selected patients who have suffered ischemic stroke. However only a fraction of all patients who have suffered this type of stroke receive thrombolysis. The short time window of 4.5 h in which treatment is licensed means that rapid care and well-organised pathways are essential. We studied measures to increase the uptake of thrombolysis through a better understanding of...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - September 11, 2015 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research