Initial question: Identify two key strategic decisions made by your current team, department, or organization. How could those decisions have been enhanced by optimization models? Support your rationale with evidence from readings or external research.

Respond to this : A key strategic decision made by the current organization was in contracting with an outside company for patient sitter services. There is a great need for these services to reduce patient falls, decrease healthcare organizations liability and to ensure all licensed and certified healthcare providers are functioning at the highest level of their certification/licensing. The healthcare organization typically garners assistance from other disciplines within the organization; security guards, dietary workers, housekeeping, etc.… at a rate that is typically one and a half to two times their base pay. This has cost the healthcare organization millions of dollars over the last year. Contracting these services to an outside company will also be costly; even if there is a savings. Optimization of this situation would be to minimize cost. I would create an in-house pool for patient sitters for resource leveling. The objective would be to increase profit and decrease sitter cost. The constraint of the optimization would be in trying to ensure that all sitter cases had a dedicated sitter without the use of overtime or outside contractors.

Another key strategic decision made by the current organization was in increasing the number of operating rooms being used by lead surgeons on weekdays. The goal was to perform more surgeries in fewer days. As they scheduled more cases the operating room was unable to staff all the cases appropriately. The objective of this decision was to generate more revenue in a shorter period of time. The constraints of this decision was the lack of staff to accommodate the volume. The optimization of this decision would be to reduce the number of cases each day and balance the O.R. schedule based on staffing.