Genetic Algorithm For Process Optimization In Hospitals

In 2004 new reimbursement policies for hospitals based on Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) were introduced in Germany. These force hospitals to minimize the cost of treatment and improve quality of care, in order to attract more patients and become more competitive. To achieve these goals hospital processes need to be optimized and compared with processes in competing hospitals. Regarding this, the scheduling of patient treatment poses a huge challenge. For purpose of analysis, optimization and validation of hospital processes especially interaction of processes and effects of interconnection it is necessary to develop validated and executable models. In (Salzwedel et. al. 2007) the processes of a cancer treatment center were modeled and optimized. This paper describes our developments toward automatically optimizing scheduling of patients, reducing processing time and optimizing resource usage in a cancer center using genetic algorithms.