A stochastic programming approach for operating theatre scheduling under uncertainty

Operating theatre scheduling is a critical task that directly impacts the efficient delivery of surgical care. In this context, we propose a comprehensive stochastic programming modelling framework which handles the inherent uncertainty characterizing the arrival of emergency patients and the duration of surgery. In particular, three recourse strategies are presented with the aim of modelling different reactive scheduling policies actually adopted by hospital managers. In order to solve realistic-sized instances in a reasonable amount of time, we develop tailored heuristic solution strategies that exploit the problem structure. Computational results obtained on a set of randomly generated problems show the effective impact of the stochastic programming approach and the efficiency of the proposed heuristics.