Strategic planning of operating room session allocation using stability analysis

Operating room (OR) resources are limited, and for this reason there is usually a competition among surgeons to win them. However, the methods developed for allocating OR sessions are mostly based on optimisation methods which compensate the preferences of surgeons or surgical specialities in favour of the productivity of the entire OR department. This leads to conflict and dissatisfaction among surgeons. To overcome this problem, a methodology based on game theoretic solutions is presented in this paper that formulates the allocation problem as a simple game. The surgeons or specialities as players then jointly pursue the goal of achieving overall stability. Stability is defined and measured using a method called Power Index. The proposed method is then combined with the Monte-Carlo technique to deal with uncertainties. To demonstrate the capability of the suggested procedures, they are applied to a case study from the literature and a set of hypothetical scenarios.