Optimal internship/residency-interview assignments for health care administration student placement.

Interview assignment is an issue of importance to all health care administration programs containing internships and residencies. More generally, many master's and doctoral level educational programs in social work, clinical psychology, and other health fields are faced with the interview assignment problem. We present a linear programming approach, which has been employed at the Baruch College/Mt. Sinai School of Medicine Graduate Program in Health Care Administration, for determining optimal internship/residency-interview assignments. Specifically, a capacitated transportation model, with the objective of maximizing the overall utility of the interview assignments, was implemented. This research is intended to demonstrate to academic program directors dealing with such problems the value of this objective method and to assist educators in their efforts to optimize the student internship/residency placement process at their various institutions.