Routing home health care for an ageing population
Home health care, nurse scheduling and workforce scheduling appear on only 15 recent papers in the operations research and AI journals. Ageing countries are moving care from hospitals and nursing homes into homes, which turns nurses into a vehicle fleet. How much travel and overtime can better routing save, and do the plans respect continuity of care?
What prompted this#
Since October 2025, 15 papers carry a nurse-scheduling, home-health-care, workforce-scheduling or staff-rostering keyword (11 in operations research journals, 4 in AI): "workforce scheduling" on 7, "home health care" on 5, "nurse scheduling" on 5. The operating room and ambulance problems get more attention than care delivered at home, which is where demand is growing fastest.
Questions#
- In real home care operations, how much travel time and overtime do optimized routes save compared with planners' routes?
- How much does keeping the same nurse with the same patient (continuity of care) cost in efficiency, and does it improve outcomes?
- Do the models capture what makes plans fail in practice: cancellations, traffic, visits that run long?
Data that could help#
Visit logs with planned and actual times from home care providers, nurse rosters, and patient outcomes such as readmissions.
Next step#
Partner with a home care provider and re-plan one month of visits with a published routing model, measuring travel savings and changes in continuity of care.