NURSE STAFFING UNDER DEMAND UNCERTAINTY TO REDUCE COSTS AND ENHANCE PATIENT SAFETY

Ashley Davis (), Sanjay Mehrotra (), Jane Holl () and Mark S. Daskin ()
Additional contact information
Ashley Davis: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road Room C210, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
Sanjay Mehrotra: Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road Room C210, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
Jane Holl: Institute for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 750 N Lake Shore Drive, Rubloff Building, 10th Floor, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
Mark S. Daskin: Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, 1205 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), 2014, vol. 31, issue 01, 1-19

Abstract: Hospitals must maintain safe nurse-to-patient ratios in patient care units to offer adequate and safe patient care. Since the patient demand is highly variable, during high patient demand periods temporary or overtime nurses are hired to ensure safe nurse-to-patient ratios. These overtime nurses incur higher expense, and are often less effective. We study the problem of permanent nurse staffing level estimation under demand uncertainty as a newsvendor model. Our models are based on limited moment information of the demand distribution. Additionally, we introduce the use of asymmetric cost functions representing overstaffing and understaffing nursing costs. Findings using data from the general surgery and intensive care units at hospitals in Chicago, IL and Augusta, GA are presented. Computational results based on publically available cost data show that 3.1% and 7.3% annual cost savings result by introducing salvage value and newsvendor optimization in intensive care and general care units respectively. This new staffing scheme also improves patient safety as shifts are staffed with more permanent nurses.

Keywords: Nurse scheduling; patient safety; newsvendor model; robust newsvendor optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217595914500055
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:apjorx:v:31:y:2014:i:01:n:s0217595914500055

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0217595914500055

Access Statistics for this article

Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR) is currently edited by Gongyun Zhao

More articles in Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().