Health Care Management Science Optimization-based physician scheduling: a systematic review, integrative taxonomy, and future research directions

Physician scheduling influences coverage, continuity of care, workload distribution, and physician wellbeing, yet the optimization literature remains scattered across clinical settings, objective structures, and evaluation practices. This review examines 45 studies on physician scheduling published between 2015 and 2025. The review protocol combines PICOS-based question formulation, PRISMA 2020-based study selection, and a CASP-informed appraisal framework. To preserve a clear focus on physician scheduling, broad reviews of healthcare or personnel scheduling were used only to position the study and were not included in the coded sample unless they dealt explicitly with physician scheduling. The f inal sample therefore comprises 44 original optimization studies and one physician-scheduling review. The analysis covers publication trends, publication profile, objective structures, service environments, comparison designs, planning horizons, and an integrative taxonomy linking care setting, objective architecture, constraint design, solution methodology, and evaluation logic. The findings show a marked increase in publications after 2020, continued dominance of single-objective formulations, and a strong concentration on weekly and monthly planning horizons. Validation remains based mainly on internal computational comparisons or local hospital practice, while direct benchmarking across studies is still limited. The paper concludes by outlining directions for future research in integrated planning, uncertainty modelling, fairness design, reproducibility, and broader assessment of managerial impact.