Simulation-Based Optimization for Surgery Scheduling in Operation Theatre Management Using Response Surface Method

Operation theatre is one of the most significant assets in a hospital as the greatest source of revenue as well as the largest cost unit. This paper focuses on surgery scheduling optimization, which is one of the most crucial tasks in operation theatre management. A combined scheduling policy composed of three simple scheduling rules is proposed to optimize the performance of scheduling operation theatre. Based on the real-life scenarios, a simulation-based model about surgery scheduling system is built. With two optimization objectives, the response surface method is adopted to search for the optimal weight of simple rules in a combined scheduling policy in the model. Moreover, the weights configuration can be revised to cope with dispatching dynamics according to real-time change at the operation theatre. Finally, performance comparison between the proposed combined scheduling policy and tabu search algorithm indicates that the combined scheduling policy is capable of sequencing surgery appointments more efficiently.