Spreadsheet Model Helps to Assign Medical Residents at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine

Interfaces, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2007

Posted: 31 Jan 2009

See all articles by Anton Ovchinnikov

Anton Ovchinnikov

Smith School of Business - Queen's University; INSEAD - Decision Sciences

Joseph Milner

University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management

Date Written: October 12, 2007

Abstract

This paper describes a spreadsheet model that was constructed to replace the manual assignment of medical residents in radiology to the on-call and emergency rotations at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine. It was created by a group of MBA students taking a Managements Science elective, and even though it contains in excess of ten thousand variables, it was easy to build and solve by lightly educated practitioners. Based of this group's work we discuss an approach that such end-user practitioners take in creating spreadsheet optimization models and synthesize a number of interesting observations. We also argue that spreadsheet models can provide a real alternative to scheduling in smaller-size problems where, despite the major advances in methodologies and software for personnel scheduling, manual scheduling still dominates.

Keywords: spreadsheet, medical, scheduling, end-user, modeling, integer, programming, optimization, constraint, constrained, OR, MS, application

Suggested Citation

Ovchinnikov, Anton and Milner, Joseph, Spreadsheet Model Helps to Assign Medical Residents at the University of Vermont's College of Medicine (October 12, 2007). Interfaces, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1335480

Anton Ovchinnikov (Contact Author)

Smith School of Business - Queen's University ( email )

143 Union Str. West
Kingston, ON K7L3N6
Canada

INSEAD - Decision Sciences ( email )

United States

Joseph Milner

University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management ( email )

105 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6 M5S1S4
Canada

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