Emergency Department Staffing: A Separated Continuous Linear Programming Approach

The emergency department (ED) overcrowding is becoming serious in recent years. The shortage of ED staff is considered to be a common factor to contribute to the ED overcrowding. In this paper, we present a new model to address the ED staffing from a macroscopic perspective. The model is a kind of optimization model called separated continuous linear programming (SCLP). By using the efficient algorithm for SCLP, we can get the ED staffing level which minimizes the total cost of the patients and the ED.

Review on the Research for Separated Continuous Linear Programming: With Applications on Service Operations

We give a review on the research for a class of optimization model—separated continuous linear programming (SCLP). SCLP takes several similar forms and can be used to find the dynamic control of a multiclass fluid network. We review the duality theory and solution methods for it. We also present application examples of SCLP on service operations.