ABSTRACT
Based on studies access to healthcare services and long waiting time, is one of the main issues in OECD countries including Canada and United States. Healthcare organizations can’t increase their limited resources nor treat all patients simultaneously. Then, patients’ access to these services should be prioritized in a way that best use the scarce resources. Some challenging aspects in patients’ prioritization problem are; considering multiple conflicting criteria, incomplete and imprecise data, associated risks that threaten patients on waiting lists, uncertainties in clinicians’ decisions, involving group of decision makers’ opinions, and system’s dynamic behavior. Inappropriate prioritization of patients waiting for treatment, affect directly on inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, quality of care, and most importantly on patients’ safety and their satisfaction. Inspired by these facts, in this …show more content…
Applications of fuzzy soft set theory in many disciplines and real life situations have been studied by many researchers but, its application in healthcare industry is new. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time in literature that this framework is introduced for patients’ prioritization. This chapter focuses on developing an interdisciplinary, systematic and innovative prioritization framework which is inspired by (Celik & Yamak, 2013) work on medical diagnosis. The proposed framework considers uncertainty, multiple criteria, risks and their inherent interactions to prioritize patients’ access to healthcare services. In this chapter, Analytical Network Process (ANP) is used to find relative importance weights of criteria and risks considering interactions and feedbacks. Then, by using the notion of a fuzzy soft set together with arithmetic operations on fuzzy number, authors apply the fuzzy soft set technology for patients’
Based on studies access to healthcare services and long waiting time, is one of the main issues in OECD countries including Canada and United States. Healthcare organizations can’t increase their limited resources nor treat all patients simultaneously. Then, patients’ access to these services should be prioritized in a way that best use the scarce resources. Some challenging aspects in patients’ prioritization problem are; considering multiple conflicting criteria, incomplete and imprecise data, associated risks that threaten patients on waiting lists, uncertainties in clinicians’ decisions, involving group of decision makers’ opinions, and system’s dynamic behavior. Inappropriate prioritization of patients waiting for treatment, affect directly on inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, quality of care, and most importantly on patients’ safety and their satisfaction. Inspired by these facts, in this …show more content…
Applications of fuzzy soft set theory in many disciplines and real life situations have been studied by many researchers but, its application in healthcare industry is new. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time in literature that this framework is introduced for patients’ prioritization. This chapter focuses on developing an interdisciplinary, systematic and innovative prioritization framework which is inspired by (Celik & Yamak, 2013) work on medical diagnosis. The proposed framework considers uncertainty, multiple criteria, risks and their inherent interactions to prioritize patients’ access to healthcare services. In this chapter, Analytical Network Process (ANP) is used to find relative importance weights of criteria and risks considering interactions and feedbacks. Then, by using the notion of a fuzzy soft set together with arithmetic operations on fuzzy number, authors apply the fuzzy soft set technology for patients’