Oscar is a healthcare administration leader who oversees the management of an ambulatory care clinic. Over the past 2 months, patient inflows have dramatically increased due to a recent shutdown of a neighboring care clinic. The patient inflows require that 90% of all nursing staff work overtime to ensure effective healthcare delivery. However, having 90% of the nursing workforce work overtime could be problematic in terms of patient quality and safety. Oscar would like to determine how he can best optimize his current staff holdings to ensure a balance between quality patient care and safety.
For this Discussion, focus on the Bastian et al. (2015) article and reflect on the optimization problem mentioned in the article.
Post a brief summary of the optimization problem presented in the Bastian et al. (2015) article in the resources for this week. Be sure to include an explanation of the objective function, as well as what the constraints actually mean. Then, explain what was done well in the article, and identify where you found shortcomings in the article. Be specific, and provide examples.