Abstract—Health care is becoming one of the fast growing industries in both, the developed and developing countries. Operating rooms provide a large portion of hospital revenue; hence, scheduling operation room surgeries is very important to maximize profits. This paper reviews the three operating room scheduling problems: the case mix problem, the master surgery scheduling problem and the surgery scheduling problem. Also, the paper introduces a research framework for an integrated planning method for the three problems. Also, the framework includes a broad system dynamics model to analyze the relationship between the different hospital's departments and the operating rooms. Keywords—Case-mix, master surgery scheduling, surgery scheduling, dynamic programming, simulation. system dynamics. I. INTRODUCTION EALTH care is one of the largest industries in the developed and developing countries. In Egypt there are $4 billion dedicated to healthcare public expenditures in 2013 [1], which accounts around 5.15% of its gross domestic product (GDP). In Canada; health-care costs doubled over the past decade and will cross the $200 billion this year with 11.6% of its gross domestic product (GDP) [1]. The main challenges facing healthcare systems in Egypt nowadays include; limited resources with higher cost of medical technology and medication, higher demand and customer expectations and shortage in planning and management decision support tools specially with the complexity of healthcare systems; hence healthcare organizations should increase emphasis on process optimization in order to control and minimize operating costs and improve the provided services level. Operating rooms (ORs) demand and its relation to other departments in the hospital presents a large share of hospital care services and expenditure resulting in an estimated 40% of hospital revenue. This makes the scheduling of ORs an Z. Y. Abdelrasol, is with the Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E- JUST), Alexandria, Egypt. He was with Industrial Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Fayoum University, Fayoum, Egypt, (e-mail: zakaria.abdelgawad@ejust.edu.eg). N. Harraz, is with the Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt. She is on leave from the Production Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt, (e-mail: nermine.harraz@ejust.edu.eg). A. Eltawil, is with the Department of Industrial Engineering and Systems Management, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST), Alexandria, Egypt. He is on leave from the Production Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt, (e-mail: eltawil@ejust.edu.eg). important problem to study in order to meet hospital goals. In this concern, it is necessary to schedule the ORs, in such a way that the operations/surgeries are carried out with maximal efficiency. The increase in efficiency of ORs schedule has a bearing of the number of surgery cases, the cost or profit, utilization of resources and waiting time of patients, which, in turn, are widely accepted indicators of ORs efficiency. The problems of ORs scheduling can be divided into three different and related problems as shown in Fig. 1, namely (i) the Case Mix Problem (CMP), (ii) the Master Surgery Scheduling Problem (MSSP), and (iii) the Surgery Scheduling Problem (SSP). The CMP refers to the time of a resource (e.g., ORs) allocated to each surgical specialty in order to minimize the total costs or maximize the total revenues or how the available ORs time is divided over the different surgeons. This stage takes place on the strategic level of hospital management as it determines for which ailments capacity will be preserved for a long time horizon. In MSS problem, the ORs time is allocated to these surgical specialties over the scheduling window (typically, a week) in order to maximize and level resources utilization. Finally, SSP refers to assigning each surgical case a start time, a day, and an OR with the target of minimizing the waiting time and maximizing resources utilization. Fig. 1 The three ORs scheduling problems and decision levels For more illustration, the following example will describe each of the ORs scheduling problems and the relation between them. In this example; an OR is available for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week with total of 40 working hours per week. There A Proposed Solution Framework for the Operating Room Scheduling Problems Zakaria Y. Abdelrasol, Nermine Harraz, Amr Eltawil H Strategic Level-CMP; Determining the time of ORs dedicated to each surgical specialty. To maximize profit or minimize cost. Tactical Level-MSSP; Allocating surgical specialties to ORs time. To maximize utilization or leveling utilization. Operational Level-SSP; Selecting and sequencing patients to be served in each OR. To minimize waiting time, minimize ORs overtime, minimize cancelled cases or maximize utilization. Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2013 Vol II WCECS 2013, 23-25 October, 2013, San Francisco, USA ISBN: 978-988-19253-1-2 ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online) WCECS 2013