Allocation of Cardiovascular and Internal Emergency Patients in Shiraz Emergency Stations: presenting the optimal pattern using transportation model

Healthcare authorities, in all around the world, are faced with resources limitations and limitless needs of citizens. Therefore, optimal resources allocation, particularly in the health sector and emergency system, seems to be of great importance. The present study aimed to determine the optimality rate of patient's distribution to hospitals by emergency stations based on the transportation model. In the current descriptive-analytical, cross-sectional study, three required data including the number of patients transferred from the emergency stations to the state hospitals, the average distance between the incident place and the state hospitals and the number of beds in the emergency departments were determined. Then, the transportation model was created based on the above data. Afterwards, the model was put in the LINGO software and the optimal results were obtained. The data provided by the Central Emergency Unit showed that from Sep. 2009 to March 2010, the number of transferred patients had been 4233 to Namazi, 1087 to Faghihi, 1999 to Beheshti, and 14 to Ali-e-Asghar hospitals. After modeling by putting the model in the LINGO software, the number of patients’ allocation were determined 584 for Namazi, 1529 for Faghihi, 3600 for Beheshti, and 1620 for Ali-e-Asghar hospitals. According to the obtained results, the majority of patients should be transferred to Beheshti and Ali-e-Asghar hospitals. Therefore, it is required that the mentioned hospitals be improved regarding their human resources and medical equipment.