Abstract: A medical scheduling system and method associating medical procedures and with medical resources, associating patients with medical procedures to form medical procedure instances, scheduling each medical procedure instance according to the availability of the medical resource associated with the medical procedure and according to medical priorities associated with the patients, the medical procedures and the resources. The A medical scheduling system and method additionally operative to simulate the effect of probable situations and events on the execution of the scheduled operation and to provide decision support information for contingency planning.