Research Trends in the Optimization of the Master Surgery Scheduling Problem

Abstract

The Master Surgery Scheduling Problem (MSSP) allocates operating theatre time to surgery groups such as medical specialities or surgeons, which is essential for daily operational planners. Many researchers have highlighted issues in the optimization of surgical scheduling problems. However, most recent reviews limited the issues at the operational level and excluded the problem characteristics such as surgery group type and schedule cyclicity. This study aims to review the state-of-the-art of MSSP and identify new trends in optimization strategies (problem characteristics and objective function), uncertainty scheduling factors (types and approaches), and solution and evaluation methods. These aspects are the key components in developing an effective MSSP optimization model. This paper reviews articles published between 2000 and 2021 that addressed MSSP, concentrating on papers between 2016 and 2021. We underlined the popularity of medical specialities as the surgery group, one-week horizon length, a cyclic schedule, multi-objective optimization and evaluation by benchmarking. The analysis shows that surgery duration is the most prominent uncertainty type, while strategies for handling this are stochastic programming, robust optimization, and fuzzy programming. We highlighted the role of heuristic approaches in addressing the MSSP’s computational complexity. This review’s trends, challenges, and potential solutions are essential for future researchers in developing optimization models for MSSP.