A Heuristic Approach to the Home Healthcare Districting Problem in the Province of Liège

Abstract

In recent years, home healthcare (HHC) has gained increasing importance, particularly in developed countries, due to an aging population and changing family structures. The demand for efficient HHC districting has become crucial to control costs and optimize resources in healthcare agencies. This master thesis addresses the needs and improvements in HHC districting, focusing on the specific case of the Province of Liège. The document commences by providing an insightful overview of the challenges associated with home healthcare and districting, emphasizing the growing significance of HHC in the healthcare landscape. It then proceeds to conduct an in-depth review of existing literature on the subject, gaining valuable insights from previous studies. The thesis proposes an innovative extension of the solution method developed by Ozturk et al. (2022) to tackle the unique challenges faced in HHC districting within the Province of Liège. The extension incorporates travel load into the objective function through two distinct scenarios and integrates contiguity constraints that take into consideration the geographical layout and specific requirements of the region. In order to enhance the solution method's effectiveness, a simulated annealing approach is integrated into the heuristic, providing a powerful technical optimisation. The proposed heuristic is subject to rigorous computational experiments to evaluate its performance with a focus on workload balance, computation time, and solution quality. The results demonstrate its promising efficacy, showcasing an efficient workload distribution within a remarkably short computation time. By achieving a more balanced distribution of workloads, the proposed method enables healthcare providers to optimise their resources and deliver quality care directly to patients' doorsteps. While the thesis offers substantive contributions, it also identifies prospective avenues for future research. Specifically, further exploration is needed to calculate the shortest path between basic units, refining the formation of basic units based on similar care loads and investigating the characteristics of HHC patient profiles in Belgium. In conclusion, this master thesis provides a comprehensive and pragmatic study on home healthcare districting. It not only identifies the challenges faced in HHC but also offers novel insights and a tailored approach specifically designed for the Province of Liège. By revolutionising the way healthcare providers manage their resources, this research contributes significantly to improve home healthcare services and ensure better patient outcomes.