Improving Resiliency in Healthcare Service by Minimizing Unsatisfied Demand
Natural or manmade disasters can bring havoc to the healthcare industry in terms of poor services, out of stocks, cost overruns, and loss of lives. Specifically, the aftermath of disasters can be brutal if not managed properly. The quicker the healthcare providers recover, the lesser the impact would be. A resilient system has the potential to reduce the recovery time significantly. Healthcare providers under emergency scenarios may realize out-of-stock situations for their critical medical supplies. The out-of-stock supplies potentially cause poor patient care including death. COVID 19 is an unfortunate example where critical medical supplies were completely out for many medical providers and that had a serious negative impact on healthcare service deliveries. Healthcare providers needed to replenish their supplies from the overseas manufacturing plants, or central distribution centers, or unaffected regional distribution centers. Most of the times healthcare authorities struggle to secure critical medical supplies from other distribution centers due to operational and transportation issues. Depending on the disaster condition, sometimes many health care providers are beyond reach due to damaged transportation networks. This is the perfect time to share critical medical supplies from unaffected regions. Proven techniques like operation research can alleviate this situation. There are very few works that have been done in the field of healthcare service deliveries in case of a disaster. This chapter discusses the modeling techniques using operations research to improve the service levels while minimizing unsatisfied demand in the natural disaster-affected zones.