Healthcare
4 optimization problems
How Do I Lay Out Outpatient Appointments — Keeping Patient Wait and Doctor Idle Time Both Low?
This page is for the manager of a private clinic or hospital outpatient ward with 5-20 doctors handling 100-800 appointments per day. Two coupled decisions: how long should an appointment slot be (15 or 20 minutes, same for everyone or not), and should some slots take two patients to absorb the no-shows? The wrong design triggers three things at once: patients wait 40-90 minutes and the complaint hotline fills up, the doctor sits idle 1-2 hours in the afternoon or runs until 8 pm, and a 20-30% no-show rate quietly erodes capacity. A fixed 15-minute template looks tidy on paper, but when real consultations swing between 5 and 25 minutes the afternoon queue always collapses.
Monthly Nurse Roster — Holding Burnout, Preference and Skill Together
This page is for the head nurse of a private hospital with 50-300 nurses staffing 24/7 wards (ICU, surgery, ER, internal medicine, maternity) and building the monthly shift roster. Every shift needs enough nurses and at least one senior qualified one, consecutive night shifts are capped, there must be at least 11 hours of rest between shifts, personal day and leave requests must be honoured, and night-shift load must be distributed fairly — all at the same time. Manual rostering past 50 nurses costs the head nurse 30-60 hours a month, and the 'who worked less' argument still opens every month. Nurses on unfair rosters quit 2-3 times more often; replacement cost is 50-150K TRY per nurse.
Which Patient to Which Ward and Bed, and When to Trigger Discharge?
For the management running a 50-500 bed private hospital or clinic with 6-15 services (cardiology, internal medicine, pediatrics, intensive care, oncology and similar). Every day two interlinked decisions must be made: which ward and bed at what hour an arriving patient is admitted to, and how many hours in advance the discharge decision is triggered for already admitted patients. When a ward fills up, the patient waits hours in the emergency department or is placed in the wrong service, which lengthens stay and raises clinical risk. If bed occupancy is tracked manually, emergency-elective collisions and weekend congestion are unavoidable.
Which Surgery in Which OR, at What Time?
Weekly surgical case scheduling for a 20–80 bed private hospital, a day-surgery center, or a clinic with 3–8 operating rooms. Every week 40–200 surgeries must be planned; each case has a different estimated duration (45 minutes to 6 hours), required surgeon and nursing team, anesthesia type, consumables and implants, and patient admission/recovery time. The decision: which case, which day, which room, in which order, with which team. Boosting room utilization while honoring surgeon off-days, patient wait time, and the emergency-reserve buffer is hard. Manual planning works up to 20–30 cases/week; above that, it takes the manager 4–8 hours a week and surgery delays and night-shift overtime rise.