- Journal
- INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
- Année
- 2025
- Volume
- 63
- Numéro
- 21
- Pages
- 7998-8025
- Mois
- NOV 2
- DOI
- 10.1080/00207543.2025.2509152
Abstract
The growing demand for healthcare services, coupled with the challenges posed by increasing urbanisation, high hospitalisation costs, and environmental concerns, underscores the need for efficient and sustainable home healthcare (HHC) networks. This study proposes a stochastic mixed-integer programming model for designing sustainable HHC networks, with a focus on the urban context of Dubai, UAE. It models facility location and staffing decisions, demand allocation, and inventory transshipment strategies, addressing economic, environmental, and social sustainability pillars. Key contributions include the incorporation of environmental sustainability through CO2 emission reduction, the modelling of personnel transfer between HHC centres to minimise layoffs and promote social sustainability, and the consideration of equipment transshipment to achieve economies of scale in procurement. The model accounts for demand uncertainty, service times, travel times, and projected population growth over a multi-year planning horizon. The optimisation model is solved using sample average approximation (SAA) and tested using real-world data from Dubai. The results reveal significant managerial insights, including the benefits of centralising resource procurement, reallocating HHC personnel, and resource sharing across facilities. This study provides a comprehensive framework for the design and management of HHC networks, offering practical insights for urban healthcare systems, which aims to balance cost-efficiency with environmental and social sustainability.