Proactive On-call Scheduling during a Seasonal Epidemic

Abstract

Overcrowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) is particularly problematic during seasonal epidemic crises. Each year during this period, EDs set off recourse actions to cope with the increase in workload. Uncertainty in the length and amplitude of epidemics make managerial decisions difficult. We propose in this study a staff allocation model to manage the situation using on-calls. An on-call scheduling policy is proposed to best balance between demand coverage and labor cost under legal constraints of working time. The problem is modelled as a two-stage stochastic Integer Linear Program (ILP) and solved using a Sample Average Approximation (SAA) method. Several epidemic scenarios are defined with data from an ED in Lille, France.