Title
Locating specialized service capacity in a multi-hospital network
Abstract
Multi-hospital systems have become very common in today's healthcare environment. However, there has been limited published research examining the opportunities and challenges of pooling specialized services to a subset of hospitals in the network. Therefore, this paper considers how hospital networks with multiple locations can leverage pooling benefits when deciding where to position specialized services, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), transplants, or neonatal intensive care. Specifically, we develop an optimization model to determine how many and which of a hospital network's hospitals should be set up to deliver a specialized service. Importantly, this model takes into account both financial considerations and patient service levels. Computational results illustrate the value of optimally pooling resources across a subset of hospitals in the network versus two alternate approaches: (1) delivering the service at all locations and requiring each site to handle its own demand, or (2) locating the service at one hospital that handles all network demand. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1016/j.ejor.2011.03.008
European Journal of Operational Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
OR in health services,Supply chain management in healthcare,Medical resource pooling
Health care,Leverage (finance),Service level,Service quality,Pooling,Resource allocation,Intensive care,Operations management,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
212
3
0377-2217
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
12
0.76
7
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Stephen Mahar1565.27
Kurt M. Bretthauer230023.24
Peter A. Salzarulo3191.90