Human Resource Scheduling and Routing Problems in Home Health Care Context: A Literature Review

Home Health Care (HHC) service is an alternative to the conventional hospitalization. The goal is to deliver medical, paramedical and social services to patients at their homes, which help them to improve and keep their best clinical, psychological and social conditions. As a large number of resources (i.e., material and human) contribute to delivering the HHC service, there are many issues that should be considered. Among these, the resource scheduling and/or routing problems (i.e., deciding in which sequence each operator will visit patients assigned to him/her) are the most important issues to be addressed while planning HHC resources. In this paper, we review studies in the literature that address the scheduling and/or routing problems as a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) or Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) in the HHC context. We analyze each study according to four main categories: i) general characteristics, ii) modeling characteristics, iii) network characteristics, and iv) data characteristics. The objective of this review is to highlight the unexplored issues in researches dealing with the resource scheduling and/or routing problems, formulated as either TSP or VRP in the HHC context.

[1]  Jesper Larsen,et al.  The Home Care Crew Scheduling Problem: Preference-based visit clustering and temporal dependencies , 2012, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[2]  Patrick Hirsch,et al.  Securing home health care in times of natural disasters , 2011, OR Spectr..

[3]  Luís Gouveia,et al.  The Skill Vehicle Routing Problem , 2011, INOC.

[4]  Jean-Charles Billaut,et al.  Home health care problem: An extended multiple Traveling Salesman Problem , 2009 .

[5]  Alain Guinet,et al.  A model for scheduling drug deliveries in a french homecare , 2009 .

[6]  Yves Dallery,et al.  Exploring new operational research opportunities within the Home Care context: the chemotherapy at home , 2009, Health care management science.

[7]  Alain Guinet,et al.  Planification des tournées des infirmiers dans une structure de soins à domicile , 2009 .

[8]  J.A. Ferland,et al.  Mathematical programming approach for routing home care nurses , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management.

[9]  Mikael Rönnqvist,et al.  Combined vehicle routing and scheduling with temporal precedence and synchronization constraints , 2008, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[10]  Salma Chahed Jebalia.  Modélisation et analyse de l'organisation et du fonctionnement des structures d'hospitalisation à domicile , 2008 .

[11]  Pisal Yenradee,et al.  PSO-based algorithm for home care worker scheduling in the UK , 2007, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[12]  M. Rönnqvist,et al.  A Branch and Price Algorithm for the Combined Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem With Synchronization Constraints , 2007 .

[13]  Tolga Bektas,et al.  Integer linear programming formulations of multiple salesman problems and its variations , 2006, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[14]  Torsten Fahle,et al.  A hybrid setup for a hybrid scenario: combining heuristics for the home health care problem , 2006, Comput. Oper. Res..

[15]  Mikael Rönnqvist,et al.  Laps Care - an operational system for staff planning of home care , 2006, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[16]  T. Bektaş.  The multiple traveling salesman problem: an overview of formulations and solution procedures , 2006 .

[17]  Harri Niska,et al.  Improved route planning and scheduling of waste collection and transport , 2006, Expert Syst. Appl..

[18]  Richard W. Eglese,et al.  A new tabu search heuristic for the open vehicle routing problem , 2005, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[19]  Renato F. Werneck,et al.  Robust Branch-and-Cut-and-Price for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem , 2004, Math. Program..

[20]  Andrew Lim,et al.  Nurse rostering problems - a bibliographic survey , 2003, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[21]  Gang Yu,et al.  A Branch-and-Cut Procedure for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows , 2002, Transp. Sci..

[22]  Gilbert Laporte,et al.  A unified tabu search heuristic for vehicle routing problems with time windows , 2001, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[23]  J. Karnon,et al.  Cost analysis of a hospital-at-home initiative using discrete event simulation , 2001, Journal of health services research & policy.

[24]  Jacques Desrosiers,et al.  VRP with Pickup and Delivery , 2000, The Vehicle Routing Problem.

[25]  C. Jagger,et al.  Economic evaluation of hospital at home versus hospital care: cost minimisation analysis of data from randomised controlled trial , 1999, BMJ.

[26]  Samy Bengio,et al.  The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows Part II: Genetic Search , 1996, INFORMS J. Comput..

[27]  Harilaos N. Psaraftis,et al.  Dynamic vehicle routing: Status and prospects , 1995, Ann. Oper. Res..

[28]  Gilbert Laporte,et al.  An Exact Algorithm for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Demands and Customers , 1995, Transp. Sci..

[29]  M. Fischetti,et al.  A Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem on Directed Graphs , 1994, Oper. Res..

[30]  G. Laporte.  The traveling salesman problem: An overview of exact and approximate algorithms , 1992 .

[31]  Jan Karel Lenstra,et al.  A classification scheme for vehicle routing and scheduling problems , 1990 .

[32]  Warren B. Powell,et al.  A Stochastic Model of the Dynamic Vehicle Allocation Problem , 1986, Transp. Sci..

[33]  G. Laporte,et al.  A branch and bound algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem , 1983 .

[34]  C Weller,et al.  Home health care. , 1978, New York state journal of medicine.

[35]  Jan Karel Lenstra,et al.  Some Simple Applications of the Travelling Salesman Problem , 1975 .

[36]  Andrew B. Whinston,et al.  Computer-Assisted School Bus Scheduling , 1972 .

[37]  S. Gorenstein.  Printing Press Scheduling for Multi-Edition Periodicals , 1970 .

[38]  William J. Cook,et al.  Solution of a Large-Scale Traveling-Salesman Problem , 1954, 50 Years of Integer Programming.

[39]  Rym Ben Bachouch.  Pilotage opérationnel des structures d'hospitalisation à domicile , 2010 .

[40]  Bruce Leff,et al.  Substitutive Hospital at Home for older persons: effects on costs. , 2009, The American journal of managed care.

[41]  Michael P. Wellman,et al.  Integer Linear Programming Formulations , 2007 .

[42]  Andrea Matta,et al.  Operations management related activities in home health care structures , 2006 .

[43]  K. Chevreul,et al.  The development of hospital care at home : an investigation of Australian , British and Canadian experiences , 2005 .

[44]  Paolo Toth,et al.  Branch-And-Bound Algorithms for the Capacitated VRP , 2002, The Vehicle Routing Problem.

[45]  Ulrich Dorndorf,et al.  A Branch-and-Bound Algorithm , 2002 .

[46]  Michel Gendreau,et al.  METAHEURISTICS FOR THE VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM. , 1994 .

[47]  Kenneth C. Gilbert,et al.  A New Multiperiod Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem with Heuristic and Application to a Scheduling Problem , 1992 .

[48]  Bruce L. Golden,et al.  VEHICLE ROUTING WITH BACKHAULS: MODELS, ALGORITHMS, AND CASE STUDIES. VEHICLE ROUTING: METHODS AND STUDIES. STUDIES IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS - VOLUME 16 , 1988 .

[49]  G. Laporte,et al.  Exact Algorithms for the Vehicle Routing Problem , 1987 .

[50]  Mwp Martin Savelsbergh,et al.  VEHICLE ROUTING WITH TIME WINDOWS: OPTIMIZATION AND APPROXIMATION. VEHICLE ROUTING: METHOD AND STUDIES. STUDIES IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS - VOLUME 16 , 1987 .

[51]  Patrick Jaillet,et al.  Probabilistic Traveling Salesman Problems , 1985 .