Chapter 13
Patient mix optimisation for inpatient planning
with multiple resources
Jan Vissers, Ivo Adan, Nico Dellaert, Jully Jeunet, and Jos Bekkers
Abstract. This contribution addresses the planning of admissions of surgical pa-
tients, requiring different resources such as beds and nursing capacity at wards, op-
erating rooms and operating theatre personnel at an operating theatre, intensive care
beds and intensive care nursing capacity at an intensive care ward. We developed a
modelling approach for this planning problem, starting from a very simplified base
model with deterministic resource requirements only for elective patients to a model
with also stochastic resource requirements and finally a model extended to emer-
gency patients. We developed the consecutive models over a period of 6 years to-
gether with a cardiothoracic surgeon who acted as problem owner and user of the
model in healthcare practice. Each of the steps taken in the development of the mod-
els provided new insights and added to the knowledge of the planning problem and
J. Vissers ( )
Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oud-
laan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: vissers@bmg.eur.nl
I. Adan
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology,
P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands
e-mail: iadan@tue.nl
N. Dellaert
Industrial Engineering School, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eind-
hoven, The Netherlands
e-mail: n.p.dellaert@tue.nl
J. Jeunet
CNRS, Lamsade, Universit´ e Paris Dauphine, Place de Lattre de Tassigny, 75775 Paris Cedex 16,
France
e-mail: jully.jeunet@dauphine.fr
J. Bekkers
Thorax Centre Rotterdam, Erasmus University Medical Centre, P.O. Box 2040 3000, CA Rotter-
dam, The Netherlands
e-mail: j.a.bekkers@erasmusmc.nl
T` anfani E., Testi A. (Eds.): Advanced Decision Making Methods Applied to Health Care.
International Series in Operations Research & Management Science 173
DOI 10.1007/978-88-470-2321-5 13, © Springer-Verlag Italia 2012