Track: Modeling and Simulation

Abstract

This research provides a step by step procedure for hospital selection problem. Although the concept of hospital location selection, site selection and other related tools and techniques have been investigated in previous literature, hospital selection problem is less investigated. In addition, the problem is not adequately linked with Multiple-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approaches. To address the gap of previous literature, this research has been completed in three linked steps to achieve as follows. The first phase of this research aims to investigate potential criteria to be applied in hospital selection problem. To do so, it applies a literature review to find potential criteria of hospital selection. Following, as developed criteria should be fit with the problem, an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is applied to rank and finalize the developed criteria of previous phase. Finally, the obtained criteria of the second phase are applied to compare and select three potential hospitals by a Fuzzy-TOPSIS approach. According to the obtained results of the first phase, cost, knowledge and expertise, quality, communication, environment, reliability and fast service are potential criteria of hospital selection. In addition, the second phase shows that cost, quality, knowledge and expertise, environment and communication are the main decision making criteria of this research. Finally, the third phase provided final ranking of hospitals as A1>A2>A3.