Simulation-Based Multi-Response Optimization for Primary Healthcare System Design and Operation

Primary care physician service is a good form of medical service. Many countries, such as China, are in the early stages of developing family doctor services and need a mature service system. The services residents receive after signing up with a primary care physician must be clarified. In many urban communities in China, universal healthcare policies have emerged. However, most need more resources, and primary care physicians and nurses cannot provide primary care services to all community residents. This study designs a primary health care system involving general practitioners and nurses based on a Chengdu, Sichuan Province community. Moreover, the operation of this primary healthcare system is modeled by a discrete event simulation to find the service capability of the system. Then we design the optimization experiments using Taguchi's method, define multiple factors and corresponding levels, simulate the system operation by simulation model for different combinations of factors and levels, and obtain the corresponding response variables. Finally, we apply the weighted principal component analysis based on multi-response optimization to find the optimal human resource allocation, which provides guidance for better service of the primary health care system.