A CP/LNS Approach for Multi-day Homecare Scheduling Problems

Homecare, i.e., supportive care provided at the patients' homes, is established as a prevalent alternative to unnecessary hospitalization or institutional care (e.g., in a rest home or a nursing home). These activities are provided either by healthcare professional or by non-medical caregivers, depending on the patient's needs (e.g., medical care or just instrumental activities of daily living). In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling Homecare Activities, that is, determining the caregivers' daily tours and the schedules of the homecare service to patients. We present a Constraint Programming (CP) formulation of the problem and we propose a Large Neighborhood Search method built upon the CP formulation.