An emergency medical services system design using mathematical modeling and simulation-based optimization approaches

Abstract

The healthcare system is no stranger to resource challenges in the face of unlimited demand to fulfill healthcare objectives of satisfying patients, maintaining service quality, and maximizing profit. Healthcare decision-makers are responsible for devising effective methods for allocating scarce resources fairly and in a way that maximizes benefits at the societal level. An emergency medical services (EMS) system plays a crucial role in stabilizing and transporting seriously injured patients to hospitals within healthcare systems. Several criteria affect the EMS function, such as call rate, traffic condition, setup, and operating costs. Therefore, the optimal design of EMS systems, including determining the location of emergency medical bases and allocating ambulances, helps improve service performance. This paper takes advantage of the mathematical modeling and simulation-based optimization approaches to identify the best location of emergency medical centers and assign the ambulances to the selected centers to maximize survival rate and minimize the total cost of the EMS system. A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability and efficacy of the developed approach in this study.