Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

An optimization framework for the sustainable healthcare facility location problem using a hierarchical conflict resolution approach

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Annals of Operations Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Optimal determination of healthcare facility locations is among critical strategic decisions that significantly impact long-term public health, well-being, and social welfare. In addition to the inherent complexities that arise from resource allocation and budget limitations in general facility location problems, this problem in the healthcare sector is even more complex. On one hand, since decision makers should consider various criteria in all aspects of sustainability in locating these facilities, this problem is a complex Multi-criteria decision-making problem. On the other hand, other objectives should also be considered in locating the mentioned facilities. As a result, this paper aims to develop a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MOMILP) model, one aspect of which is the Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) aspect of the problem by considering sustainable criteria for the healthcare facility location problem. We defined total travel distance, equity, local covering, effectiveness, and overlap functions as the objective functions of the developed model. A novel hierarchical conflict-resolution approach is included to rank the sub-criteria as a guideline for the Best-Worst Method (BWM) to find the weights of the criteria. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed model, we applied it to a real-world problem of locating preventive healthcare centers in Iran. As the final stage of the study, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to test the performance of the proposed framework in different possible scenarios. The results indicated that the approach is robust and applicable to real-life facility-location problems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ahmadi-Javid, A., Seyedi, P., & Syam, S. S. (2017). A survey of healthcare facility location. Computers and Operations Research, 79, 223–263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ali, I., Kannan, D. (2022). Mapping research on healthcare operations and supply chain management: A topic modelling-based literature review. Annals of Operations Research, 1–27

  • Anvari, S., & Turkay, M. (2017). The facility location problem from the perspective of triple bottom line accounting of sustainability. International Journal of Production Research, 55(21), 6266–6287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beheshtifar, S., & Alimoahmmadi, A. (2015). A multiobjective optimization approach for location-allocation of clinics. International Transactions in Operational Research, 22(2), 313–328.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Celik Turkoglu, D., & Erol Genevois, M. (2020). A comparative survey of service facility location problems. Annals of Operations Research, 292(1), 399–468.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatterjee, D., & Mukherjee, B. (2013). Potential hospital location selection using fuzzy-AHP: An empirical study in rural India. International Journal of Innovative Technology and Research, 1(4), 304–314.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dell’Ovo, M., Capolongo, S., & Oppio, A. (2018). Combining spatial analysis with MCDA for the siting of healthcare facilities. Land Use Policy, 76, 634–644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dogan, K., Karatas, M., & Yakici, E. (2020). A model for locating preventive health care facilities. Central European Journal of Operations Research, 28(3), 1091–1121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eldemir, F., & Onden, I. (2016). Geographical information systems and multicriteria decisions integration approach for hospital location selection. International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, 15(05), 975–997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eriskin, L., Karatas, M., Zheng, Y.-J. (2022). A robust multi-objective model for healthcare resource management and location planning during pandemics. Annals of Operations Research, 1–48

  • Farahani, R. Z., Fallah, S., Ruiz, R., Hosseini, S., & Asgari, N. (2019). Or models in urban service facility location: A critical review of applications and future developments. European Journal of Operational Research, 276(1), 1–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gargari, M. A., & Sahraeian, R. (2023). An exact criterion space search method for a bi-objective nursing home location and allocation problem. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 206, 166–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gu, W., Wang, B., Wang, X. (2011). An integrated approach to multi-criteria-based health care facility location planning. In: Pacific-Asia conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, pp. 420–430. Springer

  • Guerriero, F., Miglionico, G., & Olivito, F. (2016). Location and reorganization problems: The Calabrian health care system case. European Journal of Operational Research, 250(3), 939–954.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haeri, A., Hosseini-Motlagh, S.-M., Samani, M.R.G., Rezaei, M. (2021). An integrated socially responsible-efficient approach toward health service network design. Annals of Operations Research, 1–54

  • Harper, P. R., Shahani, A., Gallagher, J., & Bowie, C. (2005). Planning health services with explicit geographical considerations: A stochastic location-allocation approach. Omega, 33(2), 141–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karamat, J., Shurong, T., Ahmad, N., Afridi, S., Khan, S., & Mahmood, K. (2019). Promoting healthcare sustainability in developing countries: Analysis of knowledge management drivers in public and private hospitals of Pakistan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(3), 508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karatas, M., & Yakıcı, E. (2018). An iterative solution approach to a multi-objective facility location problem. Applied Soft Computing, 62, 272–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karatas, M., & Yakıcı, E. (2021). A multi-objective location analytics model for temporary emergency service center location decisions in disasters. Decision Analytics Journal, 1, 100004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mardani, A., Hooker, R. E., Ozkul, S., Yifan, S., Nilashi, M., Sabzi, H. Z., & Fei, G. C. (2019). Application of decision making and fuzzy sets theory to evaluate the healthcare and medical problems: A review of three decades of research with recent developments. Expert Systems with Applications, 137, 202–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marić, M., Stanimirović, Z., & Božović, S. (2015). Hybrid metaheuristic method for determining locations for long-term health care facilities. Annals of Operations Research, 227(1), 3–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mestre, A. M., Oliveira, M. D., & Barbosa-Póvoa, A. P. (2015). Location-allocation approaches for hospital network planning under uncertainty. European Journal of Operational Research, 240(3), 791–806.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muffak, A., & Arslan, O. (2023). A benders decomposition algorithm for the maximum availability service facility location problem. Computers & Operations Research, 149, 106030.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Niroomand, S., Bazyar, A., Alborzi, M., & Mahmoodirad, A. (2018). A hybrid approach for multi-criteria emergency center location problem considering existing emergency centers with interval type data: A case study. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 9(6), 1999–2008.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prüss-Ustün, A., Wolf, J., Corvalán, C. (2016). Preventing disease through healthy environments: A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks. In: Preventing disease through healthy environments: A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks, pp. 147–147.

  • Radman, M., & Eshghi, K. (2018). Designing a multi-service healthcare network based on the impact of patients’ flow among medical services. OR Spectrum, 40(3), 637–678.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rao, C., Goh, M., Zhao, Y., & Zheng, J. (2015). Location selection of city logistics centers under sustainability. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 36, 29–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rezaei, J. (2015). Best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method. Omega, 53, 49–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Senvar, O., Otay, I., & Bolturk, E. (2016). Hospital site selection via hesitant fuzzy topsis. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 49(12), 1140–1145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shariff, S. R., Moin, N. H., & Omar, M. (2012). Location allocation modeling for healthcare facility planning in Malaysia. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 62(4), 1000–1010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shehadeh, K.S., Snyder, L.V. (2021). Equity in stochastic healthcare facility location. arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.03760

  • Soheilirad, S., Govindan, K., Mardani, A., Zavadskas, E. K., Nilashi, M., & Zakuan, N. (2018). Application of data envelopment analysis models in supply chain management: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Operations Research, 271(2), 915–969.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soltani, A., & Marandi, E. Z. (2011). Hospital site selection using two-stage fuzzy multi-criteria decision making process. Journal of Urban and environmental engineering, 5(1), 32–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steiner, M. T. A., Datta, D., Neto, P. J. S., Scarpin, C. T., & Figueira, J. R. (2015). Multi-objective optimization in partitioning the healthcare system of Parana state in Brazil. Omega, 52, 53–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Şahin, T., Ocak, S., & Top, M. (2019). Analytic hierarchy process for hospital site selection. Health Policy and Technology, 8(1), 42–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taymaz, S., Iyigun, C., Bayindir, Z., & Dellaert, N. (2020). A healthcare facility location problem for a multi-disease, multi-service environment under risk aversion. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 71, 100755.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vahidnia, M. H., Alesheikh, A. A., & Alimohammadi, A. (2009). Hospital site selection using fuzzy AHP and its derivatives. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(10), 3048–3056.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Veenstra, M., Roodbergen, K. J., Coelho, L. C., & Zhu, S. X. (2018). A simultaneous facility location and vehicle routing problem arising in health care logistics in The Netherlands. European Journal of Operational Research, 268(2), 703–715.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, Z., Leng, L., Ding, J., & Zhao, Y. (2023). Study on location-allocation problem and algorithm for emergency supplies considering timeliness and fairness. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 177, 109078.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, L., Shi, H., & Gan, L. (2018). Healthcare facility location-allocation optimization for China’s developing cities utilizing a multi-objective decision support approach. Sustainability, 10(12), 4580.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wichapa, N., & Khokhajaikiat, P. (2017). Solving multi-objective facility location problem using the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and goal programming: A case study on infectious waste disposal centers. Operations Research Perspectives, 4, 39–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ye, H., & Kim, H. (2016). Locating healthcare facilities using a network-based covering location problem. GeoJournal, 81(6), 875–890.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, W., Cao, K., Liu, S., & Huang, B. (2016). A multi-objective optimization approach for health-care facility location-allocation problems in highly developed cities such as Hong Kong. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 59, 220–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Babak Aslani, Meysam Rabiee and Mona Jabbari have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Babak Aslani

  2. CU Denver Business School, University of Colorado Denver, 1475 Lawrence St, Denver, CO, 80202, USA

    Meysam Rabiee

  3. Department of Economics and Business, Colorado School of Mines, 1500 Illinois St, Golden, CO, 80401, USA

    Mona Jabbari

  4. Department of Management Science and Information Systems, Oklahoma State University, 601 North Willis St., Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    Dursun Delen

  5. Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Dursun Delen

Authors
  1. Babak Aslani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Meysam Rabiee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mona Jabbari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Dursun Delen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dursun Delen.

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Aslani, B., Rabiee, M., Jabbari, M. et al. An optimization framework for the sustainable healthcare facility location problem using a hierarchical conflict resolution approach. Ann Oper Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05429-9

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-023-05429-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation