A weighted multi-objective therapist assignment problem in Hong Kong

Recently, Home Health Care (HHC) services systems have attracted increasing attentions from researchers because of its growing demands from elderly, disable and chronical people. Rehabilitative service is one of the most important types of HHC services and provided by skilled therapists who work at different healthcare facilities. This article presents a multi-objective optimization mathematical model for constructing weekly assignment for therapists who provide rehab care service and aims to satisfy the demand for service at minimum cost (delay cost, reassignment cost, overtime cost) subject to a variety of constraints related to continuity of care, priority rules, overtime rules, and workload utilization requirements. By minimizing cost and satisfying requirements of patients and therapists, high service quality can be achieved. The assignment problem is solved with CPLEX in terms of the real instance. By adjusting the weights associated with different objectives, the operators will make decisions easily and propose proper strategies.