Abstract
Many ambulance providers operate both advanced life support (ALS) and basic life support (BLS) ambulances. Typically, only an ALS ambulance can respond to an emergency call, whereas non-urgent patient transportation requests can be served by either an ALS or a BLS ambulance. The total capacity of BLS ambulances is usually not enough to fulfill all non-urgent transportation requests. The remaining transportation requests then have to be performed by ALS ambulances, which reduces the coverage for emergency calls. We present a model that determines the routes for BLS ambulances while maximizing the remaining coverage by ALS ambulances. Different from the classical dial-a-ride problem, only one patient can be transported at a time, and not all requests are known in advance. Throughout the day, new requests arrive, and we present an online model to deal with these requests.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 492-509 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Transportation Science |
Volume | 53 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- integer linear programming
- non-urgent patient transportation
- online scheduling
- OR in healthcare