Medical staff planning for field hospital deployments: the START hospital

Bibliographic Details
Title: Medical staff planning for field hospital deployments: the START hospital
Authors: F. Javier Martin-Campo, M. Teresa Ortuño, Berta Ruiz-Gonzalez
Source: Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol 15, Iss 1, Pp 4-17 (2025)
Publisher Information: Emerald Publishing, 2025.
Publication Year: 2025
Subject Terms: Humanitarian logistics, Disaster response, Scheduling, Emergency medical services, Crisis management. Emergency management. Inflation, HD49-49.5
More Details: Purpose – The deployment of a field hospital can play an important role in the response to an emergency. This paper is concerned with the management of emergency staff to a field hospital from a roster of volunteers with different characteristics. This paper aims to propose a mathematical optimisation model that selects the necessary profiles of the roster according to several criteria and provides travel planning taking into account the total cost of the operation. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a multi-criteria optimisation model to take into account the preferences of the three main stakeholders involved in the deployment of the field hospital: the cooperation organisation, the staff and the end users. The model considers the possibility of using commercial or chartered flights, allows staff to indicate their preferred availability, considers the grading of volunteers according to their skills and training and provides a final flight schedule for all the medical personnel needed to operate the field hospital. Compromise programming is used to provide a Pareto optimal solution, which is compared with solutions provided by Goal programming. Findings – The model has been validated using data from the operation in a case study of the deployment of the Spanish START hospital in Turkey 2023, demonstrating the practical utility of the model in similar operations. Originality/value – The study innovates by considering a multi-criteria model that takes into account the main actors involved in the response – cooperation organisation, staff and end users – in an integrated way and proposes new measures of efficiency.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 2042-6755
2042-6747
Relation: https://doaj.org/toc/2042-6747; https://doaj.org/toc/2042-6755
DOI: 10.1108/JHLSCM-03-2024-0043/full/pdf
DOI: 10.1108/JHLSCM-03-2024-0043
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/0d8e1ff389614a1c9694386cd8d9c798
Accession Number: edsdoj.0d8e1ff389614a1c9694386cd8d9c798
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:20426755
20426747
DOI:10.1108/JHLSCM-03-2024-0043/full/pdf
Published in:Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management
Language:English