An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach for Patient and Process Prioritization in A Hospital Environment

An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach for Patient and Process Prioritization in A Hospital Environment

Title : An Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach for Patient and Process Prioritization in A Hospital Environment
Authors :
Baras, John S.
Apergi, Lida A
Golden, Bruce L
Wood, Kenneth

Conference : INFORMS Annual Meeting 2017
Date: October 22 - October 25, 2017

This research tackles the problem of patient and process prioritization in a healthcare environment with limited resources. Considering the medical cardiology department of a large medical center, a holistic model is designed and developed towards optimizing the decisions of allocating the available resources to the patients in order to minimize patients’ waiting costs. Approximate Dynamic Programming techniques are applied to optimize the aforementioned decisions over time, as well as capture the heterogeneity of the patients.