2025/05/26 by Yi Zhang, Zhenzhen Zhang, Zhang, Yi +1
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics · Health Professions · #Pharmacy and Medical Practices #Healthcare Operations and Scheduling Optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.20474
The growing aging population has significantly increased demand for efficient home health care (HHC) services. This study introduces a Vehicle Routing and Appointment Scheduling Problem (VRASP) to simultaneously optimize caregiver routes and appointment times, minimizing costs while improving service quality. We first develop a deterministic VRASP model and then extend it to a stochastic version using sample average approximation to account for travel and service time uncertainty. A tailored Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) heuristic is proposed, combining regret-based insertion and Tabu Search to efficiently solve both problem variants. Computational experiments show that the stochastic model outperforms the deterministic approach, while VNS achieves near-optimal solutions for small instances and demonstrates superior scalability for larger problems compared to CPLEX. This work provides HHC providers with a practical decision-making tool to enhance operational efficiency under uncertainty.