A three-phase methodology for home healthcare routing and scheduling under uncertainty

Abstract

Home healthcare aims to ensure that ill, disabled, and elderly patients receive high-quality, personal, and compassionate care. The current study provides a novel hybrid three-phase methodology for routing and scheduling in the home healthcare problem. In the first phase, a set of qualified candidate locations for healthcare facilities are evaluated using a combinatorial approach that combines a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process with grey rational analysis. Then, a multi-objective robust model is provided in which two features are considered: multiple periods and uncertainty in the second phase. The first objective function minimizes the total network cost, the second objective focuses on minimizing overqualified skill levels, and the third objective maximizes the qualitative factors of healthcare facilities. Finally, in the third phase, the Nimbus method is tailored to convert the three proposed objective functions into a scalar-valued optimization problem. Moreover, a real-life case study from the city of Sanandaj in Iran is applied to reflect the applicability of the proposed model and validate its solution in real situations.