Quantitative Methods in Health Care Management: Techniques and Applications, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 8

SCHEDULING

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Describe the various shift patterns and cyclical and flexible scheduling alternatives.

• Review concepts that are important for computerized scheduling.

• Evaluate scheduling alternatives for operating rooms.

• Describe factors that affect efficient utilization of operating rooms.

Scheduling for staff and resources are recurring and time-consuming tasks for health care managers. If not done skillfully, scheduling of either can waste resources and reduce the revenue of the health care organization. In this chapter, we discuss staff scheduling, mostly pertaining to nursing staff, and resource scheduling, mainly for surgical suites (operating rooms). While both of these are, respectively, the major resource ...