Tactical planning of resources in hospitals concerns elective patient admission planning and the intermediate term allocation of resource capacities. Its main objectives are to achieve equitable access for patients, to serve the strategically agreed number of patients, and to use resources efficiently. We propose a method to develop a tactical resource allocation and patient admission plan that takes stochastic elements into consideration, thereby providing robust plans. We use Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) combined with a Bayesian belief structure to express our uncertainty about the value functions. This methodology enables us to systematically explore the state and action space quickly.

Joint work with: Ilya O. Ryzhov, Gerald A. van den Berg, and Warren B. Powell.