Study on the Home Health Caregiver Scheduling Problem under a Resource Sharing Mode considering Differences in Working Time and Customer Satisfaction

The stage of social aging and further deepening of population aging has been witnessed in China. The demand for home care is increasingly growing; meanwhile, medical human resources are insufficient. In this context, a home health caregiver scheduling problem under the resource sharing mode is studied in this paper. Under such mode, two types of caregivers, i.e., full-time caregiver and part-time caregiver, are regarded as the main labor force by HHC institutions. In HHC planning, different working times for the two kinds of caregivers will need to be considered. Consequently, in this paper, a corresponding mathematical model is established and a hybrid algorithm that combines the whale optimization algorithm (WOA) with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the model. The proposed algorithm is compared with the existing algorithms to verify its effectiveness through three example tests of different scales and Solomon example. Finally, the resource sharing model is compared with the traditional model through a case, and the rationality of home health caregiver scheduling in the resource sharing model is discussed in terms of cost structure and customer satisfaction.