Application of operations management technique to minimize the transportation cost of patients

In this paper, a decision support system is presented for the management of «non-emergency» transportation services in health care. The aim is to minimize transportation costs by considering both tactical and operational levels. The problem concerns the planning of visits (tactical level) and the transportation (operational level) of a set of patients, with a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, ensuring a right level of quality. The experimental results show that the proposed decision support system can significantly reduce the total cost of transportation, both at the operational and at the tactical level.