A survey of healthcare facility location

Healthcare facility (HCF) location has attracted considerable attention from the operations research community over nearly four decades as one of the most important strategic issues in healthcare systems, disaster management, and humanitarian logistics. However, the lack of a comprehensive review in the last decade is a serious shortcoming in the literature of HCF location. This survey presents a framework to classify different types of non-emergency and emergency HCFs in terms of location management, and reviews the literature based on the framework. The papers on HCF location problems are classified in detailed tables along ten descriptive dimensions, which are consideration of uncertainty, multi-period setting, particular input/setting, objective function, decision variable, constraint, basic discrete location problem, mathematical modeling approach, solution method, and case study inclusion. For each HCF type, research gaps and possible future directions are identified. Moreover, the literature and future research possibilities are analyzed in terms of modeling approach and solution method.