AN INTEGRATED ANALYSIS OF NURSE STAFFING AND SCHEDULING POLICIES

In this paper we present an integrated nurse staffing and scheduling s ystem for analyzing nurse workforce management policies. A mixed-integ er linear programming nurse staffing model is used to determine aggreg ate labor requirements for a 6-month planning horizon. Subsequently, a mixed-integer linear programming model is used to disaggregate the nu rse staffing plan into 2-week labor schedules. The integrative system permits recursion between the staffing and scheduling models and thus enables nurse workforce management to rapidly evaluate the impact of b oth staffing and scheduling policies. We use the new system to study t he effects of staffing and scheduling policies on labor costs. The res ults suggest that there are indeed important interactions between staf fing and scheduling policies.