Economic and quality scheduling for effective utilization of operating rooms

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.