Optimal Override Policy for Chemotherapy Scheduling Template via Mixed-Integer Linear Programming

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Sikder, I. (2021). Optimal Override Policy for Chemotherapy Scheduling Template via Mixed-Integer Linear Programming. Unc Charlotte Electronic Theses And Dissertations.
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Abstract

Owing to treatment complexity in chemotherapy administration, nurses are usually required at the beginning, end, and at certain times during treatment to ensure high-quality infusion. It is, thus, critical for an outpatient chemotherapy unit to design a scheduling template that can effectively match nursing resources with treatment requirements. The template contains appointment slots of different lengths and thus allows schedulers to place patients into these appointment slots according to the provider’s order. As the template is often used over a period of several months, there usually exists a mismatch between the daily patient mix and the fixed structure of the given template. Hence, override policies must be employed to adjust to demand. However, these policies are often manually performed by schedulers. A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model has thus been proposed in this thesis to systematically develop optimal override policies in place of the manual process to improve template utilization while maintaining template stability. Numerical experiments based on real-life data from a chemotherapy unit are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Details
Author

Sikder, Ishtiak

Title

Optimal Override Policy for Chemotherapy Scheduling Template via Mixed-Integer Linear Programming

Physical Description

1 online resource (36 pages) : PDF

Date

2021

Degree Granting Institution

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

Owing to treatment complexity in chemotherapy administration, nurses are usually required at the beginning, end, and at certain times during treatment to ensure high-quality infusion. It is, thus, critical for an outpatient chemotherapy unit to design a scheduling template that can effectively match nursing resources with treatment requirements. The template contains appointment slots of different lengths and thus allows schedulers to place patients into these appointment slots according to the provider’s order. As the template is often used over a period of several months, there usually exists a mismatch between the daily patient mix and the fixed structure of the given template. Hence, override policies must be employed to adjust to demand. However, these policies are often manually performed by schedulers. A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model has thus been proposed in this thesis to systematically develop optimal override policies in place of the manual process to improve template utilization while maintaining template stability. Numerical experiments based on real-life data from a chemotherapy unit are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Genre

masters theses

Subjects--Topics

Operations research
Health services administration

Degree

M.S.

Keywords

Appointment Scheduling
Chemotherapy
MILP
Mixed-Integer Linear Programming
Outpatient Scheduling

Subject Area

Engineering Management

Advisor(s)

Xu, Guanglin

Committee Members

Huang, Yu-Li
Lim, Churlzu
Bai, Linquan

Degree Note

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2021.

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Rights Holder Information

Copyright is held by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Identifier

Sikder_uncc_0694N_12838

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2267