Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen und Management

Challenges and Solutions for Location of Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

Hamid Afshari and Qingjin Peng

Healthcare infrastructure is essential for effective operations of healthcare systems. An efficient facility location can save cost and improve the facility utilization. It is important to update the knowledge of methods and applications to locate healthcare facilities for different purposes. This paper provides an overview of methods and challenges for decision-making of the healthcare facility location to ensure an optimal solution. This research suggests answers for defined questions. Challenges are discussed in detail for modeling and applications of healthcare facility location problems. It is noticed that many existing location models were developed to cover the need of special cases. Cost and efficiency are two important criteria for healthcare services to minimize total traveling distance between patients and the healthcare facility. Uncertainty is recognized as an inevitable part of healthcare location problems. Reliability studies and sustainability should be considered in the location modeling. It is necessary to extend dynamic models to meet the trend of parameter changes over the time for decision-making. Considering the level of complexity and trend of needs for the healthcare facility, more research is required on the operation efficiency, patient safety and cost-effective solutions for the better resource utilization in the human-centered healthcare environment. The contribution of this paper is an overview of challenges and methods in the area to provide guidance for performance measures and improvements of healthcare facility location problems. This paper can be used as a guide of methods for the location or relocation of healthcare facilities.