Spreadsheet Model Helps to Assign Medical Residents at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine

Anton Ovchinnikov () and Joseph Milner ()
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Anton Ovchinnikov: Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
Joseph Milner: Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3E6

Interfaces, 2008, vol. 38, issue 4, 311-323

Abstract: This paper describes a spreadsheet model that MBA students enrolled in an MS course constructed to replace the manual method of assigning medical residents in radiology to on-call and emergency rotations at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine. Although it contains more than 10,000 variables, the model was easy to build and solve by practitioners who are “lightly educated” in OR/MS. Based on this group's work, we discuss an approach that end-user practitioners can take to create spreadsheet optimization models. We also provide several observations and argue that spreadsheet models can provide an alternative scheduling method for problems of a smaller scope. Despite the major advances in personnel-scheduling methodologies and software, manual scheduling is still the predominant method used for such smaller-scope problems.

Keywords: spreadsheet OR/MS; health-care operations; multiple-criteria decision making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:38:y:2008:i:4:p:311-323

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