Flexible home care scheduling

Abstract

Home care services are in high demand given how they are steadily becoming the primary source of care for the elderly. Powerful decision support tools are indispensable for effectively managing available staff in the context of ever-increasing demand for care and limited caregiver availability. This paper advances home care literature by introducing flexible task durations, thereby enabling tasks to be completed faster and ultimately more care to be scheduled. This new concept, which originates from practice, introduces an additional decision to be made when creating a schedule, thereby greatly increasing the scheduling complexity. Consequently, this paper introduces a new optimization-based decision support model which allows for scheduling with flexible task duration, as well as other types of flexibility. A computational study quantifies the impact of: (i) scheduling with a finer task granularity thereby enabling accurate prioritization of high and low priority care, (ii) flexibility in task duration enabling tasks to be completed faster and more care to be scheduled, and (iii) increasing the number of different locations visited by a caregiver thereby enabling a trade-off between the number of serviced clients and caregiver workload. A new publicly available real-world data set is used, obtained directly from home care organizations operating in Flanders. Analysis of the computational results demonstrates that significant improvements in operational efficiency may be realized with minimal effort required by organizations. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm's performance is confirmed by comparison against the bounds obtained by solving an integer programming formulation of the problem. Finally, a management policy scheme is proposed which, when gradually implemented in a home care organization, results in a more efficient and therefore cost-effective deployment of its workforce.

Matching daily home health-care demands with supply in service-sharing platforms

“…Caregivers start and finish their activities at their own homes (i.e., multi-depots) ( Bard et al, 2014 , Fathollahi-Fard et al, 2020 , Trautsamwieser et al, 2011 ). Each task is necessarily performed for a certain duration, which can be requested using either a fixed constant ( Cappanera et al, 2018 , Gomes and Ramos, 2019 , Liu et al, 2017 , Maya Duque et al, 2015 ) or a flexible range ( Mosquera et al, 2019 ). Yuan et al, 2018 , Shi et al, 2018 assume that the service duration is a random variable with known probability distributions, while Shi et al (2019) describe an uncertainty set for the service duration.…”

“… Yuan et al, 2018 , Shi et al, 2018 assume that the service duration is a random variable with known probability distributions, while Shi et al (2019) describe an uncertainty set for the service duration. Mosquera et al (2019) define the lower and upper bound of the duration ( ) for each visit t , such that a visit always has a minimum and maximum duration of and time units, respectively. A task starts within a time window [ ], which is considered as either a soft ( Gamst and Jensen, 2012 , Maya Duque et al, 2015 ) or hard constraint ( Grenouilleau et al, 2019 , Mosquera et al, 2019 , Yuan et al, 2018 ).…”

“… Mosquera et al (2019) define the lower and upper bound of the duration ( ) for each visit t , such that a visit always has a minimum and maximum duration of and time units, respectively. A task starts within a time window [ ], which is considered as either a soft ( Gamst and Jensen, 2012 , Maya Duque et al, 2015 ) or hard constraint ( Grenouilleau et al, 2019 , Mosquera et al, 2019 , Yuan et al, 2018 ). When caregivers work as full-time employees at traditional institutions, a lunch break is generally necessary and can happen during a time window [ ] with a regular duration ( Gomes and Ramos, 2019 , Liu et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Tasks are allocated based on firm time windows, service-duration ranges, caregiver preferences, and qualification requirements. A flexible service duration enables tasks to be completed more quickly and, ultimately, more tasks to be scheduled ( Mosquera et al, 2019 ). However, this attribute also increases the level of difficulty when attempting to address it in an exact algorithm.…”

Vastuullinen toiminnanohjausjärjestelmän kehittäminen kotihoidossa

“…Tehokas työvoiman kohdentaminen tulee olemaan yhä merkittävämpi laadun tekijä julkisessa kotihoidossa, kun suhteellinen työmäärän kasvaa. Tämä on nostanut päätöksentekoa ja johtamista tukevien ja erityisesti työvoiman järkevään kohdentumiseen suunnattujen työkalujen merkitystä [8].…”