A two-stage ahp multi-objective simulation optimization approach in healthcare

Abstract

© 2020 Creative Decisions Foundation.Quality of care is crucial for patients' satisfaction and safety in healthcare centers. The majority of hospitals attempt to implement facility-wide improvements to ensure high-quality care delivery. This study proposes a combined simulation-optimization (SO) and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to accurately assess the impact of quality improvement initiatives on different facets of the healthcare system. In this framework, first, the importance (weights) of the different healthcare criteria is determined by health providers using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Then, the weights provided by the AHP are applied in a simulation-optimization environment to determine the most efficient action that leads to the most desirable quality of care. Simulation provides a platform to examine the effectiveness of different improvement efforts and calculate their impact on the system performance measures. The proposed model is generic enough to be applied to similar problems in different domains.