2018 · INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING-THEORY APPLICATIONS AND PRACTICE

FUZZY DECISION MAKING FOR INPATIENT BOARDING: CASE OF A TUNISIAN HOSPITAL

Masmoudi, Malek, Chalgham, Marwa, Ben Houria, Zeineb

Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING-THEORY APPLICATIONS AND PRACTICE
Année
2018
Volume
25
Numéro
3
Pages
335-348

Abstract

Patients wait too long in the emergency department to be redeployed to inpatient units, in departments related to their pathologies if available, or other departments. This problem is called inpatient boarding and is one of the major cause of overcrowding in hospitals. In this paper, we will deal with the inpatient boarding problem and address the issue of decision-making problem while experts' judgments are imprecise. We provide fuzzy multiple criteria decision making methodology-based heuristic that combines fuzzy sets with Analytical Hierarchy Approach (AHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Situation (TOPSIS). The emergency department of Habib Bourguiba Hospital in Sfax in Tunisia is considered as a case study. Numerical examples are tested to show the advantages and efficiency of the proposed methodology.