title: Scheduling, revenue management, and fairness in an academic-hospital radiology division.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Physician staff of academic hospitals today practice in several geographic locations including their main hospital. This is referred to as the extended campus. With extended campuses expanding, the growing complexity of a single division's schedule means that a naive approach to scheduling compromises revenue. Moreover, it may provide an unfair allocation of individual revenue, desirable or burdensome assignments, and the extent to which the preferences of each individual are met. This has adverse consequences on incentivization and employee satisfaction and is simply against business policy.
  
  
  METHODS
  We identify the daily scheduling of physicians in this context as an operational problem that incorporates scheduling, revenue management, and fairness. Noting previous success of operations research and optimization in each of these disciplines, we propose a simple unified optimization formulation of this scheduling problem using mixed-integer optimization.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Through a study of implementing the approach at the Division of Angiography and Interventional Radiology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is directed by one of the authors, we exemplify the flexibility of the model to adapt to specific applications, the tractability of solving the model in practical settings, and the significant impact of the approach, most notably in increasing revenue by 8.2% over previous operating revenue while adhering strictly to a codified fairness and objectivity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found that the investment in implementing such a system is far outweighed by the large potential revenue increase and the other benefits outlined.
authors.affiliation: Division of Angiography and Interventional Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Baum
authors.affiliation: Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, One Amherest St, Rm E40-147, Cambridge, MA 02478. Electronic address: dbertsim@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Dimitris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bertsimas
authors.affiliation: Operations Research Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kallus
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers / Q000458:organization & administration*; D000465:Algorithms; D001900:Boston; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational / Q000191:economics*; D005178:Faculty / Q000458:organization & administration*; D007182:Income; D018803:Models, Economic; D017146:Models, Organizational; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011872:Radiology Department, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012984:Software; D017748:Time Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016526:Workload / Q000191:economics
keywords: Revenue management; fairness; mixed-integer optimization; personnel scheduling