Improvement of Operating Room Performance Using a Multi- Objective Mathematical Model and Data Envelopment Analysis: A Case Study

Surgical theater is one of the most expensive hospital resources which accounts for a high percentage of hospital receptions. Therefore, efficient planning and scheduling of the operating rooms (ORs) is necessary to improving the efficiency of any healthcare system. In this paper, weekly OR planning and scheduling problem was addressed to minimize waiting time of elective patients, overutilization and underutilization costs of ORs, and the total completion time of surgeries. In our model, the available hours ofORs, recovery beds, the surgeons, legal constraints and job qualification of surgeons, and priority of patients were taken into account. A real-life example was provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the model and was solved using ε- constraint method in GAMS software. Then, data envelopment analysis (DEA) was employed to obtain the best solution among the Pareto solutions obtained by ε-constraint method. Finally, the best Pareto solution was compared with the schedule used in the hospitals. The results indicated that the best Pareto solution outperforms the schedule offered by the OR director.

Keywords:

Multi objective model , OR planning andscheduling , ε-constraint method , Data envelopment analysis