Automated Pathologist Scheduling at The Ottawa Hospital

Jonathan Patrick (), Amine Montazeri (), Wojtek Michalowski () and Diponkar Banerjee ()
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Jonathan Patrick: Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
Amine Montazeri: South East Ottawa Community Health Center, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 8K7, Canada
Wojtek Michalowski: Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
Diponkar Banerjee: The Ottawa Hospital, Division of Anatomical Pathology, Eastern Ontario Regional Laboratory Association, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 8L6, Canada

Interfaces, 2019, vol. 49, issue 2, 93-103

Abstract: In this paper, we describe the development of a decision support tool to simplify the task of scheduling pathologists to subspecialties in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (DPLM) at The Ottawa Hospital. The DPLM employs 30 pathologists who cover 20 subspecialties. The DPLM has up to now relied on a manual monthly scheduling process that an administrative assistant typically spent approximately 30 hours each month to create. To reduce the time required and to better address the goals of the department, we developed an optimization model and a decision support tool that automates the monthly scheduling by optimizing a weighted sum of predetermined performance metrics while respecting a set of constraints. The model is an extension of the classical assignment problem; however, it includes a number of specific requirements and performance metrics unique to pathology. Using the new tool, the administrative assistant can develop a schedule that meets the DPLM’s requirements in less than one hour. We demonstrate over a three-month period that this schedule outperforms the manual schedule on all six of the performance metrics established by the department, thus providing better schedules in a fraction of the time.

The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.2018.0969 .

Keywords: healthcare; scheduling; assignment problems; pathology; linear programming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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