Home health care logistics management problems: a critical review of models and methods

Abstract

Home Health Care (HHC) services are based on a delivery network in which patients are hospitalized at their homes and health care providers must deliver coordinated medical care to patients. Demand for HHC services is rapidly growing and governments and health care providers face the challenge to make a set of complex decisions in a medical service business that has an important component of logistics problems. The objective of this paper is to provide a critical review of models and methods used to support logistics decisions in HHC. For this purpose, a reference framework is proposed first in order to identify research perspectives in the field. Based on this framework, a literature review is presented and research gaps are identified. In particular, the literature review reveals that more emphasizes is needed to develop and implement more integrated methodologies to support decisions at tactical and strategic planning levels and to consider key features from real systems.