Non-emergency Patient Transfer Scheduling and Assignment
Travis Foster (Dalhousie University)
Peter Vanberkel (Dalhousie University)
Uday Venkatadri (Dalhousie University)
J.T. Theresia van Essen (TU Delft - Discrete Mathematics and Optimization)
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Abstract
Emergency Medical Services organizations are responsible for providing paramedic crews, vehicles and equipment to transfer patients from one location to another in emergency and non-emergency settings. They must solve difficult scheduling and assignment problems to ensure on-time arrival of patients and the efficient use of health care resources during non-emergency operations. Ambulances can serve both emergency and non-emergency requests but are rarely available to serve non-emergency requests. Therefore, non-emergency requests are the responsibility of Patient Transfer Units. The objective of this study is to develop a mathematical model that will assign Patient Transfer Units to non-emergency patient transfer requests, design a schedule that will minimize travel costs and balance workloads and apply it to a real-world case study. This paper also proposes a framework to utilize historical patient transfer data in the scheduling process. The mathematical model provides decision support for the non-emergency patient transfer scheduling process.