An implicit tour scheduling model with applications in healthcare

Motivated by difficult staff scheduling problems arising in healthcare institutions, we have developed an implicit scheduling model which includes full and part-time tour types as well as intra-tour start time flexibility. Potential benefits of intra-tour start time flexibility are demonstrated through a computational experiment. The model has been embedded in a decision support system at a large delivery tertiary care hospital and has been used in numerous studies to help estimate staffing needs and to analyze the impact of scheduling policies and practices.