Abstract
Home healthcare staff scheduling has become
increasingly important as healthcare business becomes more
service oriented and cost conscious. With the ever increasing
home care needs, healthcare staff shortages, increasing
world-wide pressure for improved health care, and the
rising healthcare costs, developing appropriate models for
optimizing home healthcare operations is imperative.
Healthcare service providers require effective decision
support tools to meet customer expectations in a cost
effective manner, satisfy staff requirements such as flexible
work shifts, shift equity, individual preferences, part-time
work, and meet management goals. Various methods have
been developed to solve homecare staff scheduling problems.
In this paper, we make a state-of-the-art review of the
models and algorithms that have been reported in the
literature. In addition, we analyze the existing empirical
studies, identifying the research trends and voids in home
healthcare staff scheduling. Finally, we identify essential
prospective research avenues.