Addressing conflicting stakeholders’ priorities in surgical scheduling by goal programming

In this study, we propose a mixed integer multi-objective model which allows determining the number and typology of surgeries to be scheduled in each OR, day and session of a multiple day planning period, in context where each OR session of the planning horizon has already been assigned to a specialty, with the (multiple) objective of obtaining a desired: (i) patient due date fulfilment rate, (ii) OR utilisation, (iii) bed utilisation, (iv) number of scheduled surgeries. These objectives, reflect heterogeneous priorities of different stakeholders of the surgical scheduling process. To address the described multi-objective problem, we use a goal programming approach and we show how the exploration of the weight space, typical of such approach, can be more efficient if informed by a correlation analysis. The results presented in this study are based on real data from the Meyer University Children’s Hospital in Florence.