IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v41y2011i6p521-533.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Building Cyclic Schedules for Emergency Department Physicians

Author

Listed:
  • Yann Ferrand

    (Department of Operations and Business Analytics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Michael Magazine

    (Department of Operations and Business Analytics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Uday S. Rao

    (Department of Operations and Business Analytics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Todd F. Glass

    (Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Liberty Campus, Cincinnati, Ohio 45229)

Abstract

Physicians at a branch of the emergency department at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center complained that their schedules were too erratic because of the multitude of operating requirements, regulatory constraints, physician preferences, and holiday requests. We addressed this issue by using integer programming to build cyclic schedules that can be repeated throughout the year. These schedules are flexible enough to handle incorporating holidays, work assignments, and vacation requests ex post. After we rolled out the calendar-year-based cyclic schedule, we captured statistics to assess the viability and the quality of the yearly schedule generated. Surveys of the physicians and the scheduler after implementation showed that the new schedule provides predictability and well-balanced work patterns.

Suggested Citation

  • Yann Ferrand & Michael Magazine & Uday S. Rao & Todd F. Glass, 2011. "Building Cyclic Schedules for Emergency Department Physicians," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 41(6), pages 521-533, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:6:p:521-533
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1110.0563
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1110.0563
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.1110.0563?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John J. Bartholdi & James B. Orlin & H. Donald Ratliff, 1980. "Cyclic Scheduling via Integer Programs with Circular Ones," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 28(5), pages 1074-1085, October.
    2. Jens Brunner & Jonathan Bard & Rainer Kolisch, 2009. "Flexible shift scheduling of physicians," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 285-305, September.
    3. A.T. Ernst & H. Jiang & M. Krishnamoorthy & B. Owens & D. Sier, 2004. "An Annotated Bibliography of Personnel Scheduling and Rostering," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 21-144, March.
    4. G Laporte & G Pesant, 2004. "A general multi-shift scheduling system," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 55(11), pages 1208-1217, November.
    5. Amy Cohn & Sarah Root & Carisa Kymissis & Justin Esses & Niesha Westmoreland, 2009. "Scheduling Medical Residents at Boston University School of Medicine," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 186-195, June.
    6. Robert S. Dittus & Robert W. Klein & David J. DeBrota & Mark A. Dame & John F. Fitzgerald, 1996. "Medical Resident Work Schedules: Design and Evaluation by Stimulation Modeling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(6), pages 891-906, June.
    7. Lori S. Franz & Janis L. Miller, 1993. "Scheduling Medical Residents to Rotations: Solving the Large-Scale Multiperiod Staff Assignment Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 269-279, April.
    8. Huguette Beaulieu & Jacques Ferland & Bernard Gendron & Philippe Michelon, 2000. "A mathematical programming approach for scheduling physicians in the emergency room," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 193-200, June.
    9. Louis-Martin Rousseau & Gilles Pesant & Michel Gendreau, 2002. "A General Approach to the Physician Rostering Problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 193-205, September.
    10. Maier-Rothe, Christoph & Wolfe, Harry B., 1973. "Cyclical scheduling and allocation of nursing staff," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 7(5), pages 471-487, October.
    11. Kenneth R. Baker & Michael J. Magazine, 1977. "Workforce Scheduling with Cyclic Demands and Day-Off Constraints," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 161-167, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jonathan Patrick & Amine Montazeri & Wojtek Michalowski & Diponkar Banerjee, 2019. "Automated Pathologist Scheduling at The Ottawa Hospital," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 49(2), pages 93-103, March.
    2. n/a, 2012. "Commentaries to "The Vital Role of Operations Analysis in Improving Healthcare Delivery"," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 495-511, October.
    3. Niyirora, Jerome & Zhuang, Jun, 2017. "Fluid approximations and control of queues in emergency departments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(3), pages 1110-1124.
    4. Jan Schoenfelder & Christian Pfefferlen, 2018. "Decision Support for the Physician Scheduling Process at a German Hospital," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 215-229, September.
    5. Paola Cappanera & Filippo Visintin & Roberta Rossi, 2022. "The emergency department physician rostering problem: obtaining equitable solutions via network optimization," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 916-959, December.
    6. David Scheinker & Margaret L. Brandeau, 2020. "Implementing Analytics Projects in a Hospital: Successes, Failures, and Opportunities," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 176-189, May.
    7. Erhard, Melanie & Schoenfelder, Jan & Fügener, Andreas & Brunner, Jens O., 2018. "State of the art in physician scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(1), pages 1-18.
    8. Melissa R. Bowers & Charles E. Noon & Wei Wu & J. Kirk Bass, 2016. "Neonatal Physician Scheduling at the University of Tennessee Medical Center," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 46(2), pages 168-182, April.
    9. Sanjay L. Ahire, 2023. "McLeod Health Optimizes Staffing for Patient Room Cleaning," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 53(2), pages 155-168, March.
    10. Shaowen Lan & Wenjuan Fan & Kaining Shao & Shanlin Yang & Panos M. Pardalos, 2022. "A column-generation-based approach for an integrated service planning and physician scheduling problem considering re-consultation," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 44(5), pages 3446-3476, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erhard, Melanie & Schoenfelder, Jan & Fügener, Andreas & Brunner, Jens O., 2018. "State of the art in physician scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(1), pages 1-18.
    2. Jens Brunner & Günther Edenharter, 2011. "Long term staff scheduling of physicians with different experience levels in hospitals using column generation," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 189-202, June.
    3. Young-Chae Hong & Amy Cohn & Stephen Gorga & Edmond O’Brien & William Pozehl & Jennifer Zank, 2019. "Using Optimization Techniques and Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Solve a Challenging Real-World Residency Scheduling Problem," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 49(3), pages 201-212, May.
    4. Hannah K. Smalley & Pınar Keskinocak & Atul Vats, 2015. "Physician Scheduling for Continuity: An Application in Pediatric Intensive Care," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 45(2), pages 133-148, April.
    5. Melissa R. Bowers & Charles E. Noon & Wei Wu & J. Kirk Bass, 2016. "Neonatal Physician Scheduling at the University of Tennessee Medical Center," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 46(2), pages 168-182, April.
    6. David Rea & Craig Froehle & Suzanne Masterson & Brian Stettler & Gregory Fermann & Arthur Pancioli, 2021. "Unequal but Fair: Incorporating Distributive Justice in Operational Allocation Models," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(7), pages 2304-2320, July.
    7. Brech, Claus-Henning & Ernst, Andreas & Kolisch, Rainer, 2019. "Scheduling medical residents’ training at university hospitals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 274(1), pages 253-266.
    8. Niyirora, Jerome & Zhuang, Jun, 2017. "Fluid approximations and control of queues in emergency departments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 261(3), pages 1110-1124.
    9. Damcı-Kurt, Pelin & Zhang, Minjiao & Marentay, Brian & Govind, Nirmal, 2019. "Improving physician schedules by leveraging equalization: Cases from hospitals in U.S," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 182-193.
    10. Farzad Zaerpour & Marco Bijvank & Huiyin Ouyang & Zhankun Sun, 2022. "Scheduling of Physicians with Time‐Varying Productivity Levels in Emergency Departments," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(2), pages 645-667, February.
    11. Tristan Becker & Maximilian Schiffer & Grit Walther, 2022. "A General Branch-and-Cut Framework for Rotating Workforce Scheduling," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 1548-1564, May.
    12. Tohidi, Mohammad & Kazemi Zanjani, Masoumeh & Contreras, Ivan, 2021. "A physician planning framework for polyclinics under uncertainty," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    13. Stolletz, Raik & Brunner, Jens O., 2012. "Fair optimization of fortnightly physician schedules with flexible shifts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(3), pages 622-629.
    14. Castaño, Fabián & Velasco, Nubia, 2020. "Exact and heuristic approaches for the automated design of medical trainees rotation schedules," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    15. Van den Bergh, Jorne & Beliën, Jeroen & De Bruecker, Philippe & Demeulemeester, Erik & De Boeck, Liesje, 2013. "Personnel scheduling: A literature review," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 226(3), pages 367-385.
    16. Toni I. Wickert & Alberto F. Kummer Neto & Márcio M. Boniatti & Luciana S. Buriol, 2021. "An integer programming approach for the physician rostering problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 302(2), pages 363-390, July.
    17. Jens Brunner & Jonathan Bard & Rainer Kolisch, 2009. "Flexible shift scheduling of physicians," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 285-305, September.
    18. Melanie Erhard, 2021. "Flexible staffing of physicians with column generation," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 212-252, March.
    19. Jonathan P. Turner & Heron E. Rodriguez & Debra A. DaRosa & Mark S. Daskin & Amanda Hayman & Sanjay Mehrotra, 2013. "Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Uses Operations Research Tools to Improve Surgeon Training," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 341-351, August.
    20. Wolbeck, Lena Antonia, 2019. "Fairness aspects in personnel scheduling," Discussion Papers 2019/16, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:6:p:521-533. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.