Heuristics for Operating Theatre Scheduling: Following the Patient
Résumé
The operating theatre defines the convergence point of many hospital activities. Elective patient scheduling in an operating theatre creates a difficult problem in terms of organizing the required human and material resources. This article investigates the scheduling problem of an operating theatre that comprises operating rooms, recovery beds and stretcher- bearers according to an open-scheduling strategy. The heuristics are of polynomial complexity and are compared on the one hand to previous works and on the other hand to a lower bound.