Research On Home Health Care Scheduling And Routing Problems In Uncertain Environment

With the development of modern medical technology and the continuous growth of aging population,people’s demand for health care is increasing.Home health care(HHC)aims to provide comprehensive and multi-level services for the elderly and patients with mild diseases.HHC can not only effectively relieve the pressure on the public medical system,but also reduce people’s cost of hospitalization.Nowadays,the research on HHC problems has made some progress at home and abroad.Thus,this paper further studies the HHC problems in uncertain environment and the main studies are as follows:1)Considering the customers’ requirements for nursing skills,an HHC scheduling and routing problem with skill requirements is proposed,and a mathematical programming with skill constraint is constructed.According to the characteristics of owning large solution space and uncertainties,a hybrid method based on genetic algorithm and simulation optimization approach is designed to solve the proposed problem,which effectively improved the operation efficiency of HHC institution.2)In order to meet the needs for collaborative services of multiple HHC centers,an HHC scheduling and routing problem considering the collaborative services is proposed,and a mathematical programming model based on multi-depot collaborative services is established.According to the features of discrete and multi-depots,an improved shuffled shepherd optimization algorithm is designed to deal with the proposed problem,which greatly optimizes the allocation of service resources.3)Aiming at the location needs of multiple HHC centers,an HHC scheduling and routing problem considering the location for multi-depots is proposed,and a bi-level programming model is constructed.According to the characteristics of proposed problem,an integrated algorithm combining simulated annealing algorithm and improved ant colony algorithm is designed to handle the problem,which is helpful to improve the service quality of HHC institutions.Based on the above researches on HHC problems,the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms are verified by a series of numerical experiments.The research results of this paper can not only provide excellent plans for managers,but also improve the efficiency of decision-making and the quality of service.HHC plays an essential role in the modern medical system.On the one hand,the research on HHC problems can improve the service ability of HHC institutions.On the other hand,it can also provides theoretical and methodological support for the development of community home health care in China.