- Journal
- JOURNAL OF THE OPERATIONAL RESEARCH SOCIETY
- Année
- 2025
- Mois
- 2025 SEP 16
- DOI
- 10.1080/01605682.2025.2561178
Abstract
Patient Admission Scheduling involves assigning elective inpatients to hospital beds while considering various constraints such as bed availability, patient medical requirements, departmental and room specifications, patient preferences, and resource utilization. To tackle this complex combinatorial optimization problem, we propose a novel approach combining the Hungarian Algorithm (HA) with the General Variable Neighbourhood Search (GVNS), called HA-GVNS. This method benefits from the strengths of the HA and the iterative improvement capabilities of the GVNS. Extensive experimentation on 12 benchmark instances demonstrates that, in most cases, HA-GVNS outperforms or matches the best solutions of the 24 best state-of-the-art solving techniques. Notably, HA-GVNS effectively balances solution quality with computational efficiency, making it a promising approach for addressing the PAS problem.