Multicriteria model to allocate human resources in community care programmes

Abstract

Presently, healthcare organizations are facing shortage of human and financial resources, demanding decisions about how to allocate the available resources while pursuing multiple objectives. This is the case of the Group of Primary Care Centres (GPCC) of Northern Lisbon, which faces the challenge of prioritizing community care programmes and decide which programmes should be funded. The methods available to help decision-makers in prioritizing programmes typically do not account for the multiple objectives of the GPCC and furthermore do not present transparent and rational processes. This paper aims to create a multicriteria resource allocation model — MARCCO (Multi-criteria Model to Allocate Human Resources in Community Care PrOgrammes) — to allocate human resources to community care programmes. MARCCO's results helped and supported the GPCC in prioritizing these programmes and in understanding how the allocation of resources can add value to the organization.