A Comprehensive Review of Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Optimization

Abstract

Home Health Care (HHC) delivers medical services to patients’ homes, supporting recovery, maintaining health, and reducing hospitalizations. The Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Problem (HHCRSP) addresses the design of caregiver schedules and patient visit routes. This review analyzes studies from 2006 to mid-2024, providing a structured synthesis of HHCRSP research based on problem types, objectives, constraints, benchmark instances, and solution methods. Problem types are classified by input data characteristics as deterministic, dynamic, and stochastic, with increasing attention to dynamic and stochastic cases that better capture real-world uncertainty. Objectives are grouped by stakeholder perspective--organization, caregiver, and patient--highlighting trade-offs among cost efficiency, workload balance, and patient satisfaction. Constraints are categorized into assignment, temporal, and geographic types, with caregiver qualifications and time windows most frequently addressed. A comprehensive synthesis of benchmark instances offers practical guidance for dataset selection and comparison across studies. Solution approaches are dominated by local search and hybrid algorithms, with hybridization gaining prominence since 2016. The review concludes with insights on emerging trends toward uncertainty-aware and stakeholder-integrated HHCRSP models.