Development of human resource scheduling model in the healthcare sector during the pandemic

ABSTRACT

Researchers have paid close attention to hospital resource planning in recent decades, but the impact of human factors, such as human immunity, on healthcare management has been neglected. This paper integrates physicians’ differences to examine their effect on patient waiting time and patient satisfaction. A mixed-integer programming model is proposed by considering different levels of physicians and various types of departments. The model seeks an effective physician assignment between skills, experience, and immunity. A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGS-II) is conducted to confirm the proposed verification of the model and perform human resource planning in hospitals based on these factors. The results of sensitivity analysis demonstrated that considering the classification of patients and physicians’ issues causes a significant improvement in the efficiency of hospitals in the future. Furthermore, the number of physicians assigned to each department varies according to the type of patient, so the assignment of medical specialists in the hospital requires information about demands, including patient classification and morbidity rates in the healthcare sector. Healthcare organizations require the efficient allocation of clinical specialists. This model equips hospital administrators with sufficient knowledge of how to deal with the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Physician scheduling
• COVID-19 pandemic
• immunity
• patient satisfaction
• physician behavior
• patient type

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C6: Programming models
• I1: Health
• O15: Human resources
• O21: Planning models
• J24: Skills

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments, which have led to a significant improvement in the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).