A hybrid model for the analysis of a surgical pathway

In this paper we focus our attention on the analysis of a surgical pathway from a patient-centred point of view. The main concern of this work is the introduction of some optimization modules in the management of the most critical resources in a surgical pathway, that is the stay beds and the operating rooms, and to evaluate their impact with respect to a set of patient- and facility- centred indices. We propose a hybrid simulation and optimization model: simulation is used in order to generate a real situation with respect to the inherent stochasticity of the problem while optimization is used to take the best decisions in different points of the surgical pathway.