Planning and scheduling in healthcare for better care coordination: Current understanding, trending topics, and future opportunities

Abstract

This study reviews the research on planning and scheduling in healthcare published in Production and Operations Management (POM) and other prestigious operations management journals over the past 30 years, identifies trending topics, and discusses opportunities for future research. Specifically, we categorize the capacity planning literature into three problem contexts: (a) hospital units and operating rooms, (b) outpatient clinics, and (c) broader healthcare networks. We further classify the scheduling literature into (a) appointment scheduling, (b) surgery and workforce scheduling, and (c) recurring and integrated scheduling, with several subtopics that have attracted attention in the literature. Afterward, we demonstrate the seven emerging trends in healthcare (i.e., collaborative ecosystem and cooperative competition strategy, expanded reach of virtual care, applications of artificial intelligence in healthcare, patient engagement and personalized care, shifting to value‐based care, working toward health equity, and aging populations) and list relevant research opportunities and their related departments of POM journal. We conclude with a call for multidisciplinary perspectives to deliver coherent solutions that incorporate the complex contemporary issues harmoniously.