Optimising emergency medical centres location with a response-time-decreasing approach using hybrid methods of optimisation and simulation

Decision making about the emergency medical centres location is a complicated problem which managers of healthcare systems are confronted to. In order to respond to requests as fast as possible, the emergency medical centres should be placed in the best condition. There are some cases that affect on emergency medical service operation, like calls distribution, traffic condition and operative costs. The paper combines the optimisation techniques with simulation in locating the emergency medical centres in order to decrease the operative costs and also increase the quality of medical emergency services. The method first locates the centres using optimisation techniques, and then having assigned the ambulances to the centres, it analyses different scenarios of locating the centres and assigning the ambulances to them in a dynamic method using computer simulation. The proposed method of emergency centres location and ambulance-assignments was implemented in Isfahan (Iran) as a case study and resulted in lower response time. The comparison of results with real situations shows the efficiency of this method.