Integration of operating room planning and scheduling through managing uncertainty for emergency patients in orthopedic surgery

Abstract

Today, Health care management is becoming increasingly important for patients in hospitals. Hospital managers want to increase patient satisfaction and hospital’s efficiency, particularly in Operating Rooms (OR). Therefore, the development of adequate planning and scheduling procedures are the necessity and importance in OR. This project performs an analysis on the operating room planning at a department of orthopedic surgery and particularly concentrates on the problem of meeting the uncertainty in demand of patient arrival and surgery duration and at the same time maximizing the utilization of OR. By means of a discrete-event model and using Arena Software, proposed management policy effects on different performance metrics such as patient waiting time and the utilization of OR is simulated. The experiments show that the performance of the operating room department can be improved significantly by applying a proposed policy in reserving operating rooms for emergency. The results of this study led to assigning of two OR for emergency patients in orthopedic surgery department. Moreover, these results cause to reduce patient waiting time, number of Emergency Patients rejection and to increase utilization of OR and to prevent rejected patients from Hospital for Orthopedic surgery.