Home care staff planning and scheduling an integrated operations management perspective

The Home Health Care (HHC) sector continues to grow at an increasing rate across the globe. As such, developing proper health care management systems and operations strategies is essential for survivability, growth and competitiveness of healthcare systems. As labor is the most critical asset in the home care organizations, it is crucial to obtain an in-depth understanding of HHC operations, from an operations management view point, with specific emphasis on staff planning and scheduling. The aim of this paper is to provide a taxonomic analysis of HHC staff planning and scheduling decisions, from an operations management perspective. We identify from various cases in the literature, the core activities characterizing staff planning and scheduling. We then present a taxonomic analysis of these activities, and propose an integrated approach to decision making. A conceptual modeling framework is then proposed to assist the decision maker in solving problems in HHC staff planning and scheduling