  Most activities in hospitals require the presence of the patient. Delays in
patient transport can therefore cause disruptions and costly downtime in many
different areas and departments, which makes patient transport planning a
central operational problem in hospitals. This paper provides the first
literature review of Operations Research approaches for improving non-emergency
patient transport in hospitals. We structure the different patient transport
problems considered in the literature according to several main characteristics
and introduce a four-field notation for patient transport problems that allows
for a concise representation of different problem variants. We then analyze the
relevant literature with respect to different aspects related to the considered
problem variant, the employed modeling and solution techniques, as well as the
data used and the level of practical implementation achieved. Based on our
literature analysis and semi-structured interviews with hospital practitioners,
we provide a comparison of current hospital practice and the existing
literature on patient transport, and we identify research gaps and formulate an
agenda for relevant future research in this area.
