Decision-Making in Healthcare Resources Optimal Management: the Case of Inpatient Bed Occupancy and Associated Costs

The aim of this paper is to explore how efficient is the \textit{Fish School Search} (FSS) algorithm in building a \textit{Decision Support System (DSS)} for healthcare facility managers in order to optimize both the number of beds in their facilities and their budget. We have used a finite capacity queueing model with phase-type service distribution combined with a compartmental model and associated cost model. The \textit{Fish School Search} algorithm was used to optimize the queueing model. To illustrate the proposed approach, we used the available data reported by a department of geriatric medicine of a hospital. Our findings showed that by encoding the whole information provided by the queueing system and the cost model in a fish, the Fish School Search is a potentially beneficial tool for optimizing healthcare resources and the facility's budget. The model can be extended to different medical facilities with respect to the objective parameters.