The healthcare sector in Portugal requires an efficient use of resources and the simultaneous reduction of waiting lists. This becomes of even higher relevance to the operating theatre unit of a hospital. A bicriteria surgery scheduling problem arising in a Lisbon hospital is presented. Two conflicting objectives are considered: maximize surgical suite occupation and maximize the number of surgeries scheduled. A constructive and improving heuristic specially designed to address both objectives of the problem was developed. Results obtained with real data from the hospital are presented.

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Health Care, Operating rooms, Elective case scheduling, Heuristics.