Simulation-based Optimization for the Scheduling of Elective Surgery Under Uncertainty and Downstream Capacity Constraints

DURAND, GUILLERMO A.; J. ALBERTO BANDONI

Santa Fe

Congreso; X CONGRESO ARGENTINO DE INGENIERÍA QUÍMICA (CAIQ2019); 2019

Asociación Argentina de Ingenieros Químicos

The generation of an optimal schedule of elective surgery cases for a hospitalsurgery services unit is a well-known problem in the operations research field, with many works focusing in different objectives with several approaches. The complexity of the problem is greatly compounded when uncertainties in the parameters are considered and is an issue that has been addressed in few works in the literature. Uncertainties in a hospital surgery services unit appear in surgery durations and the availability of downstream resources such as surgical intensive care unit (SICU), presenting large deviations from their expected value and impacting in the performance of the scheduling process. The technique presented here addresses the uncertainties in the optimal scheduling of a given list of elective surgery cases by means of simulated-based optimization. The main advantage of this approach over previous works is the detail with the simulation can be constructed without losing computational performance, thereby improving the robustness of the scheduling solution.