An integer programming approach to elective surgery scheduling

The scope of this work covers a real case of elective surgery planning in a Lisbon hospital. The aim is to employ more efficiently the resources installed in the surgical suite of the hospital in question besides improving the functioning of its surgical service. Such a planning sets out to schedule elective surgeries from the waiting list on a weekly time horizon with the objective of maximizing the use of the surgical suite. For this purpose, the authors develop an integer linear programming model. The model is tested using real data obtained from the hospital’s record. The non‐optimal solutions are further improved by developing a custom‐made, simple and efficient improvement heuristic. Application of this heuristic effectively improves almost all non‐optimal solutions. The results are analyzed and compared with the actual performance of the surgical suite. This analysis reveals that the solutions obtained using this approach comply with the conditions imposed by the hospital and improve the use of the surgical suite. It also shows that in this case study the plans obtained from the proposed approach may be implemented in real life.