Title: Improving healthcare services in trauma emergency centres for patient safety under COVID-19 pandemic crisis

Authors: Dilbagh Panchal

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, Punjab, 144011, India

Abstract: This work presents an application of structured decision support model for improving health service related quality in Indian Trauma Emergency Centres (TEC) under COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Fuzzy failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) tool built decision support model has been applied for pinpointing the most precarious causes/barriers, which result in poor health service quality. Various causes/barriers responsible for poor service quality associated with TEC have been listed under FMEA sheet thorough carrying a brainstorming session with hospital management. Feedback in the form of linguistic ratings were filled by the three experts against three risk elements. For overcoming the drawback of traditional FMEA approach in terms of uncertainty/vagueness effect and same ranking problems, fuzzy FMEA was applied and the fuzzy output-based rankings are equated with traditional FMEA approach-based results in order to take the necessary action for minimising the total service time for patient safety during this pandemic period.

Keywords: trauma emergency centre; patient safety; COVID-19; health service; fuzzy FMEA; service time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2023.133746

International Journal of Operational Research, 2023 Vol.48 No.1, pp.94 - 116

Received: 08 Nov 2020
Accepted: 25 Jan 2021
Published online: 03 Oct 2023 *

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