Planning and Selection of Facility Layout in Healthcare Services

Facility layout planning (FLP) is an integral part of the hospital layout design. The purpose of this article is to develop and elaborate a FLP method for a diabetes clinic using a case study approach. In this study, the Systematic Layout Planning (SLP) approach was used to design three alternatives to diabetes clinic design using group decision making. A multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) approach, fuzzy-Technique for an order of preference by similarity to an ideal solution (fuzzy-TOPSIS) was used to select the best among the alternatives. The method used for the calculation of weight for various selection criteria was modified digital logic (MDL). The study elaborates the method using a diabetes specialty clinic but can be used for solving more complex selection problems as well. The research is the first of its kind to address the problem of FLP in the case of a diabetes clinic. The method can be easily adapted for layout selection in other specialty and multispecialty hospitals.