Facility location modeling : decentralization of Saskatoon homecare agency

Abstract

Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) is encountering a facility location problem for its centralized homecare agency which currently is located in Idylwyld Center close to the city’s downtown. Through their homecare program, they provide various home/nursing services to the elderly and patients discharged from acute care. Reducing time wasted on the road and travel expenditures, increasing hands-on-time and covering the increasing demand for homecare services are a few of SHR’s motivations to assess the project of decentralization of their home base. They have determined a set of potential sites for their new offices which are scattered all over the city. The purpose of this research is to model their facility location problem using a quantitative method, with the objective of determining the optimal set of sites that leads to minimizing overall cost. In addition to identifying the best locations, the size of each facility in terms of required staff is also determined.