Part 1
Optimization in Health Services
David is a healthcare administration leader who manages the operations of a long-term care facility. Within the past 6 months, long-term care patients and residents have experienced an increased number of hospital readmissions due to ongoing acute infections. In striving to ensure effective healthcare delivery and patient safety, David is seeking to use optimization as an analytic technique to determine how to best implement workflow processes to have clinical staff and physicians dedicate time to routine history and full-body observation to help prevent ongoing acute infections.
For this Discussion, reflect on how optimization techniques might enhance healthcare delivery. Consider the value of optimization techniques in assisting healthcare administration leaders in providing quality patient care and safety.
Give a description of some problems that might lend themselves to optimization in your health services organization or one with which you are familiar and explain why. Then, set up a fictitious optimization problem that would save one of the problems (e.g., Max z = a1x1 + a2x2, subject to constraints). Be specific and provide examples.
Part 2
Optimization Using Healthcare Examples
In what other ways might optimization be used to maximize healthcare delivery? What types of processes and workflows are best served by optimization in health services organizations?
Optimization is a vital prescriptive analytic technique that healthcare administrators can use to help address challenges in effective and efficient healthcare delivery. Health decision makers may seek to find optimal solutions for a particular objective given various constraints. For example, optimization is often used for generating nursing staff schedules to ensure appropriate staff coverage with varying patient inflows.
For this Assignment, you will be using optimization techniques to evaluate two separate medical problems, one involving mechanical heart valves and another involving a pharmaceutical company. Review the resources and examine the different optimization techniques that can be used for this Assignment.
- Complete Problem 36 on page 657 (mechanical heart valves) and Problem 42 on page 659 (pharmaceutical company) of your course text.
Note: You will complete these problems using Excel and Solver.
Resources:
Albright, S. C., & Winston, W. L. (2017). Business analytics: Data analysis and decision making (6th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
- Chapter 13, “Introduction to Optimization Modelin
Expert Solution Preview
Introduction:
Optimization techniques are used in healthcare administration to improve the quality of patient care and safety. Health service organizations face various problems that can be solved by optimization techniques. This assignment aims to address two parts of healthcare optimization: firstly, by discussing the problems that can be solved by optimization and how it can enhance healthcare delivery, and secondly, by evaluating medical problems using optimization techniques.
Part 1:
Optimization techniques can help healthcare administration leaders provide quality patient care and safety by addressing some common problems. For example, optimizing staff scheduling to ensure appropriate staff coverage with varying patient inflows, optimizing inventory management, optimizing resource allocation, and optimizing workflow processes can be addressed using optimization techniques.
Let’s consider an inventory management problem as an example. A health services organization that maintains inventories of medical supplies may face challenges in managing the inventory levels for each item. The problem is to minimize the total cost of inventory while maintaining a desired service level. A fictitious optimization problem that addresses this issue can be set up as follows:
Maximize z = ∑ (Ai * Xi) – ∑ (Bi * Yi)
Subject to:
∑ Xi – ∑ Yi = D (Demand constraint)
Xi = Bi (Lower bound on reordering)
Xi, Yi >= 0 (Non-negativity constraint)
Here, Ai and Bi are the unit costs and ordering costs, respectively, for item i. Xi and Yi represent the inventory levels and reordering amounts for item i. Mi and Ri represent the upper bounds on inventory and reordering levels, respectively. D represents the demand for item i. The objective is to minimize the total cost of inventory, which is the sum of the inventory holding costs and ordering costs.
Part 2:
Optimization techniques can be used in healthcare delivery to maximize outcomes in various processes and workflows. For instance, optimization can be used in healthcare delivery to minimize staff overtime, maximize bed utilization, minimize supply costs and maximize efficiency in the operating room. The types of processes and workflows that are best served by optimization in health services organizations include scheduling, capacity planning, resource allocation and facility layout optimization.
For this assignment, problem 36 on page 657 and problem 42 on page 659 of the course text will be evaluated. These problems involve the optimization of mechanical heart valves and a pharmaceutical company, respectively. The problems require the use of Excel and Solver to solve the optimization models.
