Block Scheduling: Toward a Master Surgical Schedule

The operating theatre constitutes the most expensive sector in healthcare centres. Operating room (OR) planning is the best tool to help OR manager to administrate this sector. However, the operating theatre planning depends on the strategy carried out in the hospital. In this article, we provide the OR manager with a constructive tool allowing him/her to objectify and well define a block time allocation for surgeons performing their elective cases in a surgical suite in a private healthcare centre. Two approaches have been proposed. In the first one, we find an operating schedule for all surgeons individually considered, sharing the operating theatre facilities. In the second approach, we introduce a notion of surgical group. We propose an operating schedule corresponding to surgeons belonging to surgical groups. Finally, we present different tests to evaluate the performance of the OR plans that have been developed in each approach