Multi-Criteria Vendor Selection for Outsourced Ancilliary Services

Photo Source: https://medicine.musc.edu/departments/centers/cbi/imaging-resources

Researchers: Jingran Li, Preethi Srinivasan, Dave Weidman

A hospital administrator who chooses a supplier of ancillary services faces a challenging decision scenario. These services are classified as diagnostic (e.g., MRI interpretation), therapeutic (e.g., physical therapy), and custodial (e.g., home hospice care). Choosing to perform one of these services internally or outsourcing to another organization requires the decision maker to consider multiple criteria.  They include cost (i.e., service delivery per patient), quality (i.e., providing a competent service), timeliness (i.e., providing the service without delay), and resiliency (i.e., maintaining service availability even in the face of potentially disruptive events).

This project will incorporate a methodology that applies a “willing to pay” framework to quantify each decision criteria for each pair of vendor choice options (that can include an internal option). Because the cost of service delivery will be known, the willingness to pay for quality, timeliness, or resiliency can be estimated iteratively by presenting the decision maker with pairs of vendors. Much of the research will focus on translating these evaluation pairs to a final vendor ranking in an accurate and intuitive manner. The decision procedure can be facilitated by showing visualizations illustrating the likelihood associated with inaccurate outcomes, late service delivery, or disruption likelihoods.