Optimization of shifts and on-call Coverage of cardiologists working in a hospital complex structure by using free software

The organization of shifts and on-call coverage of Cardiologists working in a hospital complex structure must ensure the availability 24h, full year, complying with laws and contractual, social and professional obligations. It faces a 'staff scheduling' problem. The team consists of 16 Cardiologists to ensure daytime and nighttime guards, a nighttime on-call service, on-call service for full day on weekends and public holidays and a 24h hemodynamic on-call. Special situations and exceptions are taken into account. An original software was developed in Java to input data, generate the mathematical model and read back the solution, relying on a open SQL database. The solution is obtained by GUSEK, an open tool to the linear programming solver GLPK minimizing the sum of the deviations from individual quotas. The system generates the shifts monthly. Typical computation time is few minutes to ensure that a solution exists and few hours to obtain a highly optimized solution. The system is in use for 22 months. It provides equal assignment of Cardiologists to each type of shift with uniform like distribution, avoiding immediate repetition of the same shift. The software is open source available for download at: www.arc.fvg.it.