Decreasing personnel overtime and the hiring of temporary workers in nursing homes.

There is currently a large number of growing problems in the nursing, care and home care sector (the VVT sector). A preliminary study into the perceived problems by four different VVT institutions has revealed the following common denominator problem: the VVT institutions cannot meet demand without hiring temporary workers or high amounts of overtime hours. This problem, specified to one institution in particular, is the subject of the thesis. Therefore, in the research, we develop an intervention for the specific institution that reduced the personnel overtime hours, while providing all the care needed, adhering to regulations, and keeping the hiring of temporary workers as low as possible. We use a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model to make this happen. The MILP creates shifts and assigns the shifts to personnel members in one-step, thereby accounting for personnel preferences in the creation of shifts as well.