A new fuzzy approach based on BWM and fuzzy preference programming for hospital performance evaluation: A case study

Hospital performance evaluation (HPE) has a major role in improving the quality, safety, and effectiveness of health care services, so it is indispensable for proper and continuous operation of hospitals. Although several studies have been performed on HPE, few have used group decision-making (GDM). This study presents a comprehensive multi-criteria GDM model for HPE under uncertain conditions. In this model, we have combined the group best-worst method (GBWM) and fuzzy preference programming (FPP) method to create an applicable framework for GDM in which members of a decision-making group including decision-makers (DMs) have different expertise and the importance of criteria and DMs opinions are determined by a supervisor. The advantages of the proposed method include the integration of the GDM process in the form of a single model and there is no need to calculate separately the consistency of the decisions of the decision-making team members. Finally, a case study conducted on 5 hospitals in Tehran is presented to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that Sina Hospital, Baharloo Hospital, and Tehran Heart Center were ranked first to third, respectively. Also, we can conclude from this study that the proposed integrated framework is capable to address the HPE problem by using a GDM and considering the uncertainty of the comparisons made by decision-making team members. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.