A simulation-based multiobjective optimization approach for health care service management

Hospitals are huge and complex systems. However, for many years, the management was commonly focused on improving the quality of the medical care, while less attention was usually devoted to operation management. In recent years, the need of containing the costs while increasing the competitiveness along with the new policies of National Health Service hospital financing forced hospitals to necessarily improve their operational efficiency. In this paper, we focus on a management problem usually arising in health care. In particular, we deal with optimal resource allocation of a ward of a big hospital. To this aim, we propose a simulation-based optimization approach that makes use of a discrete-event simulation model, reproducing the hospital services and combined with a derivative-free multiobjective optimization method. The results obtained on the obstetrics ward of an Italian hospital are reported, showing the effectiveness of the new approach proposed.