Title: The home care districting problem: an application to family clinics

Authors: Olavo Alves Diogo; Eduardo Raupp De Vargas; Peter F. Wanke; Henrique Correa

Addresses: Centre for Studies in Health Services Operations Management, COPPEAD Graduate Business School, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 – Cidade Universitária 21941-918, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil ' Centre for Studies in Health Services Operations Management, COPPEAD Graduate Business School, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 – Cidade Universitária 21941-918, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil ' Centre for Studies in Logistics, Infrastructure and Management, COPPEAD Graduate Business School, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rua Pascoal Lemme, 355 – Cidade Universitária 21941-918, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil ' Rollins College, 1000 Holt Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789, USA

Abstract: There are five major issues associated with the provision of home healthcare services: facility location, districting, assignment, scheduling, and routing problems. This article investigates methods to solve home healthcare districting problems in order to improve the management of family clinic operations. Family clinic is a community healthcare centre which comprises a network of clinics staffed by a group of general practitioners and nurses providing primary healthcare services in a certain area of Brazil. The most relevant authors on this subject and the techniques most utilised to solve the districting issue are identified through a social network analysis of the authors. Finally, one of these techniques is applied to analyse its suitability for the (real) case in question, and paths are suggested to resolve territory alignment problems in the implementation of family health strategies.

Keywords: metaheuristics; districting; healthcare; territory alignment; family clinics; algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2021.115184

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2021 Vol.39 No.1, pp.1 - 25

Received: 22 Jan 2018
Accepted: 24 May 2019
Published online: 24 May 2021 *

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