A Bound on the Performance of an Optimal Ambulance Redeployment Policy

Ambulance redeployment is the practice of repositioning ambulance fleets in real time in an attempt to reduce response times to future calls. When redeployment decisions are based on real-time information on the status and location of ambulances, the process is called system-status management. An im...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOperations research Vol. 62; no. 5; pp. 1014 - 1027
Main Authors Maxwell, Matthew S., Ni, Eric Cao, Tong, Chaoxu, Henderson, Shane G., Topaloglu, Huseyin, Hunter, Susan R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Linthicum INFORMS 01.09.2014
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Subjects
ambulance deployment
ambulance location
ambulance relocation
Ambulance services
Ambulances
Analysis
coupling
CROSSCUTTING AREAS
Distribution functions
Emergency medical services
Emergency transportation
Fractions
Integers
Knowledge engineering
Location-based systems
Mathematical vectors
move-up
Operations research
Order processing
Real time
Response time
Services
Simulation
Simulations
Studies
system-status management
Travel time
Workloads
United States
United States > US
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Summary:Ambulance redeployment is the practice of repositioning ambulance fleets in real time in an attempt to reduce response times to future calls. When redeployment decisions are based on real-time information on the status and location of ambulances, the process is called system-status management. An important performance measure is the long-run fraction of calls with response times over some time threshold. We construct a lower bound on this performance measure that holds for nearly any ambulance redeployment policy through comparison methods for queues. The computation of the bound involves solving a number of integer programs and then simulating a multiserver queue. This work originated when one of the authors was asked to analyze a response to a request-for-proposals (RFP) for ambulance services in a county in North America.
ISSN:0030-364X
1526-5463
DOI:10.1287/opre.2014.1302