| Author: | Leung, Po Ling |
| Title: | Optimisation of staff level planning and scheduling for nursing homes |
| Advisors: | Kwong, C. K. (ISE) Ip, W. H. (ISE) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Subject: | Nursing homes -- Administration Nursing homes -- Employees Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering |
| Pages: | xix, 212 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Personal planning efficiency and effectiveness are regarded as the most critical issues in enhancing the capacity of residential care homes for the elderly. After reviewing the previous studies of staff level planning and scheduling in nursing homes, some deficiencies of the studies were noted. First, the previous studies of staff level planning and scheduling in nursing homes mostly consider a single objective/criterion, such as staff level and staffing cost. In reality, several objectives/criteria have to be considered simultaneously in order to obtain good quality or even optimal solutions for the staff level planning and scheduling. Second, the previous studies of staff level planning and scheduling did not consider skill mix, skill substitution and consequence of skill quantitatively in their optimisation models. Third, in the previous studies, staff level planning and scheduling were tackled in two separate phases and in a sequential approach. However, staff level planning and scheduling are highly interrelated and separate consideration of them would result in strategic and operational conflicts. Accordingly, three main research objectives have been identified and addressed: i) To perform staff level planning of nursing homes' nursing staff using a multi-objective optimisation approach; ii) To perform staff scheduling of nursing homes' nursing staff using a multi-objective optimisation approach.; and iii) To develop a methodology for performing the integrated staff level planning and scheduling problem with the consideration of skill mix, skill substitution and consequence of skill. To cope with the ever increasing residential care services demand associated with ageing population, managers of residential care places strive to enhance their service capacity by providing good service quality, especially to those fragile ones. However, good personnel planning practice, in literature, is usually defined by i) total staffing cost, ii) total staffing level or iii) total overtime work required. All evaluation criteria have drawbacks. Therefore, this study proposes a multi-objective optimisation model to consider these factors simultaneously. Skill related concepts are also investigated in this study driven by the practical needs for better nursing staff utilisation and that in real elderly care homes setting. In literature, skill mix, skill substitution and consequence of skill are addressed qualitatively without formally taken into consideration in the planning stage. Thus, personnel planning without considering skill related concepts may cause inaccurate estimation of staffing levels and the associated staffing costs. Therefore, a personnel planning model with skill related concepts is proposed to bridge the research gap. Ultimately, an integrated staff level planning and scheduling problem for nursing staff in nursing home with regarded to the skill related concepts is oriented in this study. In literature, rather than integrating decisions in one planning problem, staff level planning and scheduling are often addressed in two consecutive phases in the personnel planning process. Meanwhile, researchers believe that it is much more beneficial to integrate both decisions into one. Staff level planning and scheduling are highly interrelated that traditional distinction between them may result in strategic and operational conflicts. To illustrate the limitations, this study firstly formulates and solve the staff level planning problem and scheduling problem as two distinctive and consecutive phases. Effectiveness of applying optimisation technique to solve the model and limitations of separating the staffing and scheduling decisions are demonstrated with numerical experiments. In this regard, this study deals with the integrated staff level planning problem and scheduling problem (ISLPSP) by firstly decomposing the integrated problem into the staff level planning problem (master problem) and the staff scheduling problem (sub-problem), and solve them in an iterative approach. The algorithm starts with the staff level planning problem because it directly confines the number and the mix of nursing staff required for each shift, and thus affects the total staffing levels and total staffing costs. Solution of staff scheduling will provide feedback for the master problem for further process. Accordingly, a Two-level Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (TLNSGA-II) for ISLPSP is proposed. A case study of a subvented nursing home in Hong Kong is conducted to illustrate the proposed model and methodology. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model with skill related concepts reduces the total staffing costs while increases staffing levels remarkably. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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