Locating and allocating health services with regard to cost and efficiency: case study Amol city

Locating hospitals and health care centers and assigning them to clients is one of the major challenges that managers and urban planners encounter it. Right decision in this area is so important that wrong decisions in addition to increasing costs of providing health services, can cause irreparable damages to the individual and social health. The efficiency of such models is critical so that decision-makers in this field has always been committed to make effective use of available resources.
In this paper, a multi objective linear programming model has developed based on simultaneous consideration of locating and allocating services in health centers. Further, using data envelopment analysis in this model caused to locate and assign services at maximum efficiency. The model was used for locating and allocating available services in Amol hospitals. To solve the proposed model the weighting method and the augmented epsilon constraint approach were applied.
showed that the augmented epsilon constraint has a better capability than the other method to solve this problem Outcomes: The model enables decision makers to consider quality in addition to the cost in locating and allocating procedure. Increasing efficiency along with considering costs are achievements of proposed model for health decision makers.
The Pareto results that achieved from solving proposed model can be a suitable base for making decisions. Managers can compare obtained solutions and their optimality and make proper decisions. The performed case study showed that the model has a proper performance in locating and allocating available services in Amol hospitals.