Improving the capacity planning of the hospice team at TWB

Thuiszorg West Brabant (TWB) is a home care company from Roosendaal that provides various types of home care to their parents that require different levels of care. The care ranges from simpler tasks like household help or showering to more complex tasks like giving medication or injections. The research has been conducted in cooperation with the hospice team of TWB which is one of several specialized teams. The focus of the research is on improving the capacity planning of the hospice team. In the past, the hospice team experienced a high capacity-demand mismatch. OŌen, the number of scheduled nurses exceeded the care demand which leads to overcapacity. Consequently, the planned worktime cannot be sufficiently filled with work for the nurses, so they have to end their shifts earlier and have trouble to reach their weekly worktime according to their contracts. In fewer cases TWB also experienced undercapacity. With improving the capacity planning we aim to align the capacity of nurses with the actual care demand, so that the capacity-demand mismatch is reduced and therefore goals such as higher job satisfaction of the nurses and cost reduction can be reached. Following the steps of the managerial problem-solving method (MPSM) we address our main research question: How can the capacity planning of the hospice team be improved in order to reduce the capacity-demand mismatch?