Allocation of hospital capacity to multiple types of patients

Nur Ayvaz*, Woonghee Tim Huh

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

49 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Allocation of a limited capacity of resources among several customer types is a critical decision encountered by many manufacturing and service firms. We tackle this problem by focusing on a hospital setting and formulate a general model that is applicable to various resource allocation problems of a hospital. To this end, we consider a system with multiple customer classes that display different reactions to the delays in service. By adopting a dynamic-programming approach, we show that the optimal policy for a system involving both lost sales and backorders is not simple but exhibits desirable monotonicity properties. Furthermore, we propose a simple threshold heuristic policy that performs well in our experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)386-398
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Revenue and Pricing Management
Volume9
Issue number5
Early online date17 Sept 2010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2010
Externally publishedYes
Event9th Annual INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Conference at the Kellogg School of Management - Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States
Duration: 22 Jun 200923 Jun 2009

Keywords

  • backorders
  • dynamic programming
  • hospital resource allocation
  • lost sales

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