What is Block Scheduling

Surgical units are generally the most costly and least utilized units of hospitals. In order to provide higher utilization rates of surgical units, scheduling of operating rooms should be done effectively. Inefficient or inaccurate scheduling of operating room time often results in delays of surgery or cancellations of procedures, which are costly to the patient and the hospital. Therefore, operating room scheduling and management problems have been an important area of research both for operations researchers and artificial intelligence researchers since the 1960s. In this chapter, the operations research and artificial intelligence solutions developed for operating room scheduling problems in the operational level are examined and discussed. The studies are classified according to the approaches employed. The chapter is aimed to be helpful for researchers who are willing to make contributions in this area as well as the practitioners who are looking for efficient and effective ways to handle the operating room management problem of their own.