title: Scheduling prioritized patients in emergency department laboratories.
abstract: This research focuses on scheduling patients in emergency department laboratories according to the priority of patients' treatments, determined by the triage factor. The objective is to minimize the total waiting time of patients in the emergency department laboratories with emphasis on patients with severe conditions. The problem is formulated as a flexible open shop scheduling problem and a mixed integer linear programming model is proposed. A genetic algorithm (GA) is developed for solving the problem. Then, the response surface methodology is applied for tuning the GA parameters. The algorithm is tested on a set of real data from an emergency department. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the efficiency of the emergency department by reducing the total waiting time of prioritized patients.
authors.affiliation: School of Industrial Engineering and Center of Excellence for Intelligent Based Experimental Mechanics, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Electronic address: aazadeh@ut.ac.ir.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Azadeh
authors.affiliation: School of Industrial Engineering and Center of Excellence for Intelligent Based Experimental Mechanics, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hosseinabadi Farahani
authors.affiliation: School of Industrial Engineering and Center of Excellence for Intelligent Based Experimental Mechanics, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Torabzadeh
authors.affiliation: School of Industrial Engineering and Center of Excellence for Intelligent Based Experimental Mechanics, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baghersad
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006292:Health Priorities; D007755:Laboratories, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010561:Personnel Staffing and Scheduling / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014218:Triage / Q000458:organization & administration*; D057188:Workflow
keywords: Emergency department laboratory; Genetic algorithm; Health care management; Patients scheduling; Triage