A multi-objective optimization model for scheduling nurses and routing them in home health care services
Subject Areas : تحقیق در عملیات
Hamid Reza Yousefzadeh
1
,
somayeh Harati Motlagh
2
,
Moosarreza Shamsyeh Zahedi
3
1 - Department of Mathematics, Payame Noor University (PNU), P.O. Box 19395-4697, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of Mathematics, Payame Noor University (PNU), P.O. Box 19395-4697, Tehran, Iran
3 - Department of Mathematics, Payame Noor University (PNU), P.O. Box 19395-4697, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: بهینهسازی چند هدفه, زمانبندی, برنامهریزی ریاضی, مراقبت پزشکی در منزل, مسیریابی,
Abstract :
Recently with the growing population and the consequences of factors such as the increase in the number of elderly and patients with chronic diseases, the demand for receiving Home Health Care (HHC) is increasing. HHC services providers are looking for the optimal solutions in planning and scheduling HHC service delivery to maximize the satisfaction of patients and nurses in addition to minimizing the costs to patients. Accordingly on the one hand, the patients prefer to be visited at some specific periods based on their nursing skills. On the other hand, nurses are willing to provide services during their desired time windows. Following the rules corresponding to the working times in the contract, observing the soft and hard time windows, and taking required breaks are some of the restrictions that must be considered.The main objectives of this paper are to minimize the total traveling times and overtime of all nurses and to maximize the satisfaction level of patients as well as nurses, which are achieved through a multi-objective mathematical programming model.The proposed model considers the preferences of the nurses, as well as their patience. Moreover it establishes mandatory breaks for nurses after a certain period of work to assign qualified nurses to patients, optimize schedules, and determine the route of nurses, and provides high-quality services. Finally by applying the proposed model to a set of different random test problems, and by considering the stopping criterion on the problem solving time, we analyze the numerical results corresponding to optimal scheduling and allocation.
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