Abstract

Inpatient dialysis units face an uncertain daily demand of hemodialysis procedures for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients hospitalized for health conditions that may or may not be directly related to their renal disease. While hospitalized, these patients must receive hemodialysis in addition to any medical services needed for their primary diagnosis. As a result, when demand for inpatient dialysis is high, treatments and procedures required by these inpatients may be delayed increasing their length of stays (LOS). This research presents an optimization approach for daily scheduling of inpatient hemodialysis to maximize the efficiency of the dialysis unit while minimizing delays of other scheduled procedures that could extend the LOS of the inpatients. The optimization approach takes into account the dialysis protocols prescribed by a treating nephrologist for each dialysis patient, the variable duration of the dialysis treatments, the limited capacity of the dialysis equipment and personnel, as well as the isolation requirements used to mitigate the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). In addition, a variant of the optimization approach is developed that considers uncertainty associated with rescheduling procedures that are delayed and the expected impact on LOS. An experimental performance evaluation illustrates the capability and effectiveness of the proposed scheduling methodologies. The results of this research indicate that the optimization-based scheduling approaches developed in this study could be used on a daily basis by an inpatient dialysis unit to create efficient dialysis schedules.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Hemodialysis--Management--Mathematical models; Scheduling--Mathematical models; Hospital utilization--Length of stay

Publication Date

8-23-2013

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

Industrial and Systems Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Kuhl, Michael

Advisor/Committee Member

Proano, Ruben

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in December 2013. Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at RC901.7.H45 T65 2013

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

ISEE-MS

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