A Mixed-Integer Goal Programming Model for Nursing Service Budgeting

Abstract

This paper presents a mixed-integer goal programming model for expense budgeting in a hospital nursing department. The model incorporates several different objectives based upon such considerations as cost containment and providing appropriate nursing hours for delivering quality nursing care. Also considered are possible trade-offs among full-time, part-time and overtime nurses on weekdays as well as weekends. The budget includes vacation, sick leave, holiday, and seniority policies of a hospital and various constraints on a hospital nursing service imposed by nursing unions. The results are based upon data from a study hospital and indicate that the model is practical for budgeting in a hospital nursing department.

Budget allocation for permanent and contingent capacity under stochastic demand

“…Second, budget deviations are allowed for over-expenditure so the objective consists in a joint minimization of capacity shortages and budget deviations. We borrow the budget deviation penalty assumption from Trivedi (1981): the end-of-year budget surplus is rewarded linearly with rate , whereas the budget deficit is penalized linearly with a penalty cost such that .…”

“…Budgeting models related to human resources planning can be found in the more specific OR-literature on health care. For instance, Trivedi (1981) develops a model for nursing service budgeting that ensures a balanced staff to meet a deterministic demand while satisfying cost control and regulation constraints. Kao and Queyranne (1985) design a stochastic model to provide the weekly pattern of permanent nurses and emphasize the detrimental impact of demand uncertainty on budget estimates.…”

Stochastic dynamic nursing service budgeting

“…The primary concern of Trivedi (1981) is to ensure balanced staffing, to meet union demands, and to satisfy cost control and containment regulations, such that the number of part-time and the number of full-time nurses satisfy integrity. This complex problem is modeled as mixed-integer goal programming, which allows employing only deterministic demand.…”

“…For example, Jeang (1996) alloys the work of Trivedi (1981) and Kao and Queyranne (1985) in order to build a stochastic model that provides the weekly pattern of the permanent nurses. The main decision is on the weekly pattern of the permanent nurses as in Trivedi (1981), nevertheless the model accounts for uncertainty of demand, as Kao and Queyranne (1985).…”

An interactive reference point approach for multiobjective mixed-integer programming using branch-and-bound

“…The increasing interest in MOMILP decision aid is due to the fact that most decision problems are inherently multiobjective and many of them must include discrete variables. Examples of different applications are the multicriteria scheduling problem (Huckert et al, 1980), nursing service budgeting (Trivedi, 1981), vendor selection (Weber and Current, 1993), the groundwater pollution containment problem (Ritzel et al, 1994), location±transportation problems (Osleeb and Ratick, 1983;Ferreira et al, 1996;Coutinho-Rodrigues et al, 1997), among others. White (1990) provides a survey of applications of multiobjective mathematical programming that includes the integer and mixed-integer cases.…”