Efficient Operating Room Scheduling for Pediatric Surgery: A Case Study

Operating Rooms (ORs) are critical resources in hospitals, playing a key element in ensuring efficient healthcare delivery. Optimizing OR scheduling is important to improve hospital operations, minimize costs and enhance patient satisfaction. While multiple strategies have been proposed in the literature, the issue of reducing surgical overtime, particularly by minimizing the maximum completion time of all scheduled tasks (makespan, $C_{\max }$), remains insufficiently explored. This paper focuses on managing surgical overtime effectively to ensure timely surgery starts throughout the workday. To address these challenges, we propose a new optimization model for OR scheduling, solved using CPLEX and validated with real data from a Pediatric Surgery Department of a Tunisian hospital. The results demonstrate a significant improvement over the manual scheduling approach of the hospital.