AUTHOR=Salami Azadeh , Afshar-Nadjafi Behrouz , Amiri Maghsoud 

TITLE=A Two-Stage Optimization Approach for Healthcare Facility Location- Allocation Problems With Service Delivering Based on Genetic Algorithm

JOURNAL=International Journal of Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 68 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2023.1605015

DOI=10.3389/ijph.2023.1605015

ISSN=1661-8564

ABSTRACT=Location-allocation of healthcare facilities is vital for all communities to improve the accessibility of facilities to the entire population. In this paper, a multi-period maximal-covering location-allocation model for healthcare services is proposed in which the capacity of facilities as well as service transfer are considered. The model is formulated based on a two-stage optimization approach. In the first stage, facilities are located to maximize covered demand, and in the second stage, patients are allocated to capacitated facilities based on their radius of coverage over multiple time periods. The model ensures the attainment of equity access. The problem, which belongs to the NP-hard class of optimization problems, is solved using a linear mixed-integer programming (MILP) model. A numerical example is presented to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model. Furthermore, a hybrid genetic-sequential quadratic programming algorithm (GA-SQP) is proposed to find near-optimal solutions for large instances. We used some randomly generated test instances of different sizes and compared them to those obtained via the exact method to evaluate the performance and efficiency of the GA-SQP.