Layout Planning Problems in Health Care

Abstract

In general, layout planning problems can be classified as in-house location problems where the aim is to minimize traveling or material handling costs based on distances by deciding on the relative positions of any kind of organizational units inside a building. This class of operations research problems originates from industrial applications, for example, planning the location of different machines of an assembly line needed to manufacture a product or the arrangement of racks and shelves within a warehouse.The special case of layout planning problems in health care has been first introduced by Elshafei in 1977(Elshafei 1977. He modeled a hospital layout problem as a quadratic assignment problem (QAP) and developed heuristics to solve it. In the framework for hospital planning and control the hospital layout planning problem is classified as a resource capacity planning problem on a strategic level . Although it is a long-term decision, the spatial organization within hospitals also directly influences the quality and efficiency of health care and secondary services of the daily routine (Choudhary et al. 2010; Hignett and Lu 2010) as well as patient satisfaction (Chaudhury et al. 2005). In practice, hospital buildings are commonly planned by architects based on experience, design aspects and legal regulations. Instead of that, it is important to develop and follow a holistic approach in order to combine the architectural and legal aspects with logistics, i.e., patient, personnel and material flows inside the future hospital building. In this context, the established operations research methodologies, especially optimization and simulation techniques, can be applied in order to support finding an optimal or robust hospital layout. On the one hand, optimal can mean to minimize traveling costs for I. Arnolds ( ) · S. Nickel Discrete Optimization and Logistics at the IOR,

Recreational, Fitness and Health Center: Facility Layout Design Case Study

“…Construction of new or renovation of existing health centers requires a large budget and a long time. Therefore, layout planning is a critical task as layout designs must be developed based on a well-studied strategic plan while considering the effect on customer experience and service quality; confusing layouts can add to customer' anxiety [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. The team used a combination of the Process (functionality) layout, cellular manufacturing, and cellular layout.…”

Healthcare Application of Operations Management Tools and Techniques: A Review of Literature

“…In a similar study, Arnolds & Nickel, (2015) solved the hospital layout planning problem through the application of location analysis in Mexico's tertiary hospitals. A study of medical facility resource scheduling principles in Tanzania (Ileri 2013;Huyen, et al, 2017) showed that resource management is an integral part of healthcare management (Reiling, B., Ronda, D., & Murphy, M., 2021).…”

Layout Planning in Healthcare Facilities: A Systematic Review

“…Works in this category varied in scope. While Arnolds and Nickel (2015) addressed problems in all hospital areas, others focused on specific sectors such as operating rooms (Brogmus, Leone, Butler, & Hernandez, 2007), nursing units (Doede, Trinkoff, & Gurses, 2018;Rashid, 2015), and intensive care units (ICUs; Rashid, 2014). Brogmus, Leone, Butler, and Hernandez (2007) reviewed best practices in operating rooms, suggesting that good designs prevented accidents and improved the performance of doctors and nurses.…”