Decomposition-based heuristics for the integrated physician rostering and surgery scheduling problem

In this paper, a comparison and validation of various priority rules for the Integrated Physician Rostering and Surgery Scheduling Problem (IPSSP) under different objective functions is made. We integrate three constructive heuristic types with two corresponding priority rule classes in order to obtain a solution for the combined physician rostering and surgery scheduling problem. Twelve priority rules for the surgery assignments and six priority rules for the physician rostering are used to schedule the surgeries in the operating theatre on a weekly basis, while generating adequate rosters for the physicians that maximizes their preferences. Our goal is to provide a suitable heuristic for every problem type, problem size and problem structure for the hospital manager to use in every possible condition. The problem type represents the most occurring objectives and goals according to literature. The problem size depicts the size of the hospital and its corresponding utilization. The problem structure defines the different demands of the physician roster and the surgery schedule. It can be shown that for every situation a fitting heuristic can be provided. These high-quality decomposition-based constructive heuristics can also be used in meta-heuristics to generate good solutions. Most importantly, we have established general recommendations with respect to the use of the different proposed heuristics in different hospital settings.