Development and implementation of models and tools supporting the master surgical scheduling process

The operating theatre is one of the most critical functional area in a hospital. In fact, it drives most of the hospital admissions and it is responsible for most of its costs. Optimising the operating theatre operations, is therefore a primary concern for an increasing number of hospitals. In this regard, one of the most challenging problem that hospitals need to face is the planning and scheduling of the surgical activities. This thesis focuses on the master surgical scheduling (MSS) problem. Such a problem consists in the determination of (i) the specialty (or specialties) to assign to each operating room and session of each day of the planning cycle and (ii) the number and the typologies of surgeries that should be performed in each operating room session. A number of authors have proposed models to support such a process. However, most of them test the models, often on real data, but do not illustrate practical aspects of their implementations. This thesis concerns an action research study aiming at addressing this gap and thus at developing and implementing a MSS tool in a real context i.e. the Meyer children’s hospital in Florence. As an action research, this study has a twofold objective: to solve a practically relevant problem and to contribute to the body of knowledge. In fact, first, it aims to implement a MSS tool at the Meyer hospital. Second, it proposes novel mixed integer programming models addressing the MSS problem and provides fresh insights about the its implementation process. These experience-driven evidences may be useful for researcher and practitioners to increase the chance to success in the transfer of a MSS model to their hospital settings.