A Decision-Making Model based on Mathematical Programming for Designing the Health Care Network of Tehran in Monopoly Conditions

Abstract

By having a comprehensive look at the existent hospitals and health care centers of the country, it can be understood that some basic principles were not considered in a large number of the mentioned health care centers. These neglected principles involve appropriate site selection and hospital accessibility. Therefore, undesirable patient service occurs that consequently leads to change the architecture of the hospitals. If a few facilities are utilized or if they are not located well this can lead to increase in mortality (death) and morbidity (disease). Therefore, this study aims on presenting a mathematical programming model to prepare the fundamentals of establishing an efficient health care network by selecting the optimal sites for building new health cares among some predefined candidate sites. The purpose of the proposed model is the maximum possible covering of the patient population, which has not been covered by the previous health care centers. Obviously this problem clarifies the necessity of establishing new health cares. The proposed model is considered and discussed in monopoly conditions. Subsequently, for validating the proposed model, a set of data related to 45 health care centers located in southern Tehran (i.e., Eslamshahr and Rey) are used and the obtained results are provided in the final section.