ANALYSIS OF THE OPERATIONAL CAPACITY OF A SURGICAL CENTER: MATHEMATICAL MODELLING APPLIED TO SCALING AND RESOURCE ALLOCATION

Abstract

The scope of this paper covers the analysis of the capacity of the surgical center through mathematical modelling and research conducted in a hospital in Porto Alegre (RS). The study aimed to identify if the current scaling of the Surgical Center could hold, or not, an increased volume of patients, under optimal allocation of operating rooms, keeping the time patterns of surgical procedures. The authors used the diagnostic research methodology in order to develop an integer linear programming model. The model was tested with real data obtained from hospital records in order to validate the simulation of current scenario and subsequently performed based on the forecast of surgical demand increase, giving rise to two future scenarios. The results of the experiment suggest that increasing the number of rooms of the Surgical Center is not set as mandatory to hold the new anticipated demand. It is noteworthy that, unlike other works, the differential of this study is that the modelling of allocation considers features found in some environments of Surgical Center, since, in practice, some surgical procedures require specific infrastructure not available in all rooms of the Surgical Center. Thus, considering this feature becomes an important attribute of this tool that aims to support the operational capacity management of surgical rooms