Optimization of the layout of departments in hospitals

Abstract

Planning the layout of departments in hospitals or reconstructing existing ones is a complex task at the strategic decision-making level. Confusing layouts can contribute to patients' anxiety, increase the time spent in clinical procedures and total distance travelled by patients. The development of quantitative approaches in solving this problem dates back to the late seventies of the twentieth century. In this paper, we present an approach to the hospital layout based on a Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS). The proposed approach was tested on artificial and two real-world instances: University Clinic Regensburg, Germany and Ahmed Maher Hospital in Cairo, Egypt. Presented computational results show that the proposed VNS quickly reaches all optimal solutions for small-scale instances obtained by exact solver and provides quality solutions on large-scale instances that are relatively close to the best known solutions in literature.

Keywords

• hospital layout
• patients travel distance minimization
• variable neighborhood search