The practice of health home care for chronic patients and elder people is constantly growing. The main factors are the population aging and the perceived quality of life by patients being at home rather that at the hospital, but also the possibility of offering a high standard service at a low cost. For these reasons local health providers are putting more resources on this type of service. The service is usually managed manually coordinating the work of nurses moving in the territory and visiting patient homes providing the required cares. The main aspects to be considered are the so called fidelization, that is the preference of patients to be served by the same nurse, and the workload balancing among nurses. The increasing dimension of the service makes the managing problem very difficult to organize and calls for suitable optimization tools. We will present a software tool that combines a Geographical Information System with mathematical optimization models for the routing and the rostering of nurses. The case of the local health care provider of Ferrara will be presented.
An optimization tool for planning health home care services
NONATO, Maddalena;
2010
Abstract
The practice of health home care for chronic patients and elder people is constantly growing. The main factors are the population aging and the perceived quality of life by patients being at home rather that at the hospital, but also the possibility of offering a high standard service at a low cost. For these reasons local health providers are putting more resources on this type of service. The service is usually managed manually coordinating the work of nurses moving in the territory and visiting patient homes providing the required cares. The main aspects to be considered are the so called fidelization, that is the preference of patients to be served by the same nurse, and the workload balancing among nurses. The increasing dimension of the service makes the managing problem very difficult to organize and calls for suitable optimization tools. We will present a software tool that combines a Geographical Information System with mathematical optimization models for the routing and the rostering of nurses. The case of the local health care provider of Ferrara will be presented.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
