Regional health care planning: a methodology to cluster facilities using community utilization patterns

Table 1 Initial candidate solutions

Clusters	*incF*	SH	Max
3	94.81	0	91
5	81.11	0	60
7	33.59	0	61
11	14.88	0	51
14	7.93	0	48
18	6.59	0	45
21	9.38	0	36
23	6.52	0	36
27	6.02	1	24
29	3.56	1	17
31	3.52	1	17
33	4.11	1	17
36	4.35	2	17
38	4.39	5	17
42	4.05	7	17
46	4.12	9	16
49	3.92	11	16
51	3.71	13	12
53	3.61	15	12
55	3.53	16	12
58	4.02	20	12
60	3.97	22	12
63	4.02	27	12
69	4.25	36	12
73	4.61	40	12
75	4.43	43	12
77	4.13	44	9
81	4.38	48	8
83	4.17	49	7
86	4.29	53	7
89	3.77	58	7
93	3.83	64	7
97	4.14	70	7
99	4.37	73	7
101	4.72	77	7
103	5.22	79	7
107	4.94	83	7
109	3.77	86	7
112	3.79	90	7
115	3.84	93	7
120	3.41	99	7
124	3.08	103	5
126	2.52	107	5
129	2.44	111	5
132	2.39	114	5
135	2.10	118	5
141	1.91	125	5
144	1.91	129	4
146	1.87	133	4
149	1.99	136	3
152	1.88	141	3
154	1.92	145	3

SH are the number of single hospital clusters in the overall solution and Max is the maximum number of hospitals in any cluster in the Hospital Group solution. Solutions with less than 29 clusters have Max > 20 and were removed from consideration. From the remaining solutions, the minimum SH value was 1. Therefore, solutions with SH > 1 were removed from consideration. From the remaining 3 solutions (29, 31, 33), the 33 cluster solution was the maximum K and selected as the final Hospital Group solution.

ISSN: 1472-6963