Approaching the Location of Healthcare Facilities: How to Model the Decision Problem

The management of health policies is characterised by multi-level hierarchies and actors. Given the presence of several and sometimes conflictual needs and expectations elicited by stakeholders involved and the complexity of the decision problem concerning the location of healthcare facilities, a multi-methodological evaluation framework is proposed within this contribution. The process is based on the four traditional stages of the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), recognised as the most critical in the context of the location of healthcare facilities, namely stakeholder analysis, criteria definition, weights assignments and aggregation procedure. Since several methodologies have to be combined, the proposed framework is conceived as an iterative and flexible approach where each phase can be reviewed when necessary. The methodology proposed is tested on a case study located in the Municipality of Milan, Italy.