Operations Research for Health Care This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Assessing factors affecting flood-induced public health risks in Kassala State of Sudan
Conclusion: AHP is a useful and cost effective method to assess, prioritize and plan for health risk interventions. Addressing the root causes through integrated risk, multi-hazard management is essential to reduce the health risks. The main areas of intervention are; access to basic service, safety of the health centers, and environmental health management. (Source: Operations Research for Health Care)
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - November 20, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A comprehensive location-allocation method for specialized healthcare services
Publication date: December 2012 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 1, Issue 4 Author(s): Siddhartha S. Syam , Murray J. Côté This paper focuses on the development, solution, and application of a location-allocation model for specialized health care services such as the treatment and rehabilitation necessary for strokes or traumatic brain injuries. The model is based on our experience with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ integrated service networks. The model minimizes the total cost borne by the health system and its patients and incorporates admission acuity levels, service proportion require...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Scheduling physiotherapy treatment in an inpatient setting
This study seeks to help address this deficiency by detailing a computer program that has been introduced to timetable physiotherapy treatment at a major neurological rehabilitation unit in Cardiff, UK. The aim is to show how automated scheduling can provide a far more effective and efficient alternative to manual scheduling by hand. Whilst the scheduling procedure will undoubtedly differ from unit to unit, this paper outlines what are thought to be some of the most important objectives and constraints in addition to an adaptable methodology that can be employed to arrive at a good-quality solution in a timely fashion. The...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Application of queueing theory in health care: A literature review
Publication date: March–June 2013 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 2, Issues 1–2 Author(s): Lakshmi C , Sivakumar Appa Iyer This paper reviews the contributions and applications of queueing theory in the field of health care management problems. This review proposes a system of classification of health care areas which are examined with the assistance of queueing models. The categories described in the literature are expanded and a detailed taxonomy for subgroups is formulated. The goal is to provide sufficient information to analysts who are interested in using queueing theory to model a health...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in health care: A bibliometric analysis
Publication date: March–June 2013 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 2, Issues 1–2 Author(s): Vakaramoko Diaby , Kaitryn Campbell , Ron Goeree Decision support is a discipline that is becoming increasingly important in health care decision making. Many jurisdictions are exploring the use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) as a decision support framework. Indeed, health care decision makers still face complex choices while being urged to provide more comprehensiveness, structure, and transparency to the existing decision-making framework. This paper documents MCDA applications in health ca...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Scheduling of nurses: A case study of a Kuwaiti health care unit
Publication date: March–June 2013 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 2, Issues 1–2 Author(s): Rym M’Hallah , Amina Alkhabbaz This paper demonstrates the ease and invaluable benefits of applying simple Operations Research (OR) tools to a common and sensitive problem in health care. Specifically, it investigates the problem of designing timetables for nurses working in Kuwaiti health care units that operate around the clock. It details the constraints of the problem, specifies the objective, proposes a mixed integer program, solves the mathematical model for the case of a specific health care unit...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Pharmaceutical supply chain and inventory management strategies: Optimization for a pharmaceutical company and a hospital
We present an inventory model that integrates continuous review with production and distribution for a supply chain involving a pharmaceutical company and a hospital supply chain. The model considers multiple pharmaceutical products, variable lead time, permissible payment delays, constraints on space availability, and the customer service level (CSL). We develop a procedure for determining optimal solutions for inventory lot size, lead time, and the number of deliveries to achieve hospital CSL targets with a minimum total cost for the supply chain. A numerical example illustrates the model application and behavior. (Sourc...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Balancing learning and economies of scale for adaptive clinical trials
Publication date: September 2013 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 2, Issue 3 Author(s): Adam J. Fleischhacker , Yao Zhao Prior to the start of an adaptive clinical trial, demand for an investigational drug can be highly uncertain. Treatment length, recommended dosages, and forecasted patient recruitment can fluctuate in response to early trial results. While initial demand forecasts can be very wrong, the factors influencing future demand can be learned during the trial. To take advantage of this learning, intra-trial production and/or packaging can be leveraged, but this is done at the expense of s...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Involving patients and the public in healthcare operational research—The challenges and opportunities
Publication date: December 2013 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 2, Issue 4 Author(s): M. Pearson , T. Monks , A. Gibson , M. Allen , A. Komashie , A. Fordyce , F. Harris-Golesworthy , M.A. Pitt , S. Brailsford , K. Stein Interest is growing internationally in the potential benefits of patient and public involvement (PPI) in research. In the United Kingdom (UK) health and social care services are now committed to involving patients and service users in the planning, development and evaluation of their services. Many funders require PPI as a prerequisite for funding. What does healthcare oper...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Centralized versus distributed sterilization service: A location–allocation decision model
The objective is to reduce costs while improving the quality of service. This paper deals with the problem of sterilization service configuration within a hospital network. Two alternatives are considered: (1) each hospital in the network maintains its sterilization service in-house; (2) a central sterilization service ensures this function for all hospitals in the network. This decision is based on a location–allocation model of the sterilization service. A Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) is proposed to find the optimal configuration of the sterilization service (centralized vs. distributed), the optimal location an...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Modeling the impact of changing patient flow processes in an emergency department: Insights from a computer simulation study
We report on the use of discrete-event simulation modeling to support process improvements in a hospital emergency department (ED), namely the implementation of a split-flow process. Our partner hospital was effective in treating patients, but wait time and congestion in the ED created patient dissatisfaction, unsafe conditions and staff morale issues. The split-flow concept is an emerging approach to manage ED processes by splitting patient flow according to patient acuity and enabling parallel processing. We contrast the split-flow operational model to other types of ED triage. While early implementations of the split-fl...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A queuing model to address waiting time inconsistency in solid-organ transplantation
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 3, Issue 1 Author(s): David A. Stanford , Jung Min Lee , Natasha Chandok , Vivian McAlister Organ transplantation is a vital therapy for the treatment of many patients. Due to blood compatibility rules, there has been a pattern in many jurisdictions for differing organ types where recipients of blood type O experience longer waiting times than those of other blood types, partly due to cross-transplantation of too many O organs to compatible donors of other blood types. In response to this, a recent development in some jurisdictions is a...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A model for prostate brachytherapy planning with sources and needles position optimization
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 3, Issue 1 Author(s): Germán Ferrari , Yoel Kazareski , Federico Laca , Carlos E. Testuri Low dose rate brachytherapy is one of the treatments for localized prostate cancer. In the prostate case, the radioactive sources are located through needles into the organ tissue. The sources are placed in a way that enough dose is delivered to treat the tumor while preserving the surrounding healthy tissue. Since there are several location possibilities for tens of sources in use and constraints among them, the problem where to locate the source...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

A simulation model for perioperative process improvement
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 3, Issue 1 Author(s): Solmaz Azari-Rad , Alanna Yontef , Dionne M. Aleman , David R. Urbach Operating rooms (ORs) are a hospital’s largest cost center and greatest source of revenue. Surgical delays and cancellations lead to staff dissatisfaction due to long working hours, patient anxiety from long wait time, and extra costs for staff overtime. A discrete event simulation was used to model the perioperative process in the general surgery service at Toronto General Hospital, aiming to reduce the number of surgical cancellations and the...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research

Enhancement of patient and staff experience at outpatient pharmacy via optimization of drug–shelf reallocation
Publication date: March 2014 Source:Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 3, Issue 1 Author(s): Hong Choon Oh , Jane Ai Wong , Mui Chai Tan The drug–shelf allocation planning problem of an outpatient pharmacy entails assignment of drugs to shelves. It is a challenging combinatorial problem due to its underlying safety precautionary measures and operational constraints, such as that drugs of similar names should not be placed together, oral drugs should not be placed together with non-oral drugs, and mixtures must not be placed above non-mixtures. A good drug–shelf allocation plan is critical to an outpatie...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - October 12, 2014 Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research