Many healthcare institutions have been researching tools to reduce costs and to ensure efficient use of hospital facilities. Operating rooms are considered among the most costly hospital facilities. In the present work, a two-step approach for operating rooms scheduling is introduced. The first step consists of assigning surgical operations to operating rooms. The second step consists of sequencing the assigned operations with the objective of improving operating room use while taking into account the various resource-related constraints and the specifications of the operations processes. Two strategies for operations sequencing are presented: (1) operation assignment to operating rooms obtained at the first step is not reconsidered, (2) operation assignment to operating rooms is redefined in order to be less constrained. Computational experiments performed on a set of randomly generated problems are used to compare the two strategies.

International Journal of Production Economics, (Download).