Sorting radiology departments in a disaster management assessment with G-ARASsort

This study presents a new multiple criteria group decision making (MCGDM) sorting method, named G-ARASsort – a new variant of the ARAS ranking method, to address a disaster management assessment problem through a group consensus. MCGDM sorting methods improve a decision-making problem by providing useful and unparalleled insights. Disaster management is one of the most critical areas of decision-making, where decisions are made under tremendous pressure. Radiology units play a central role in disaster management and the present study establishes a new disaster management assessment framework to assess their disaster readiness. The proposed method is applied to sort 37 radiology units into four ordered classes, defined through a Delphi panel. The results show that approximately 11% and 14% of the departments placed in the first (best) and the last (worst) classes, respectively. The findings can help the lower-class units improve their performance by using the upper-class units’ performance as a yardstick. Additionally, healthcare directors can identify more reliable radiology units to turn to during disasters and prevent patient misallocation. A comparative analysis is also conducted to confirm the method’s competency.