The location of a hospital in a rural region: The case of the Negev

This paper reports on the strategic planning of hospital services in the Negev region of Israel, a sparsely populated region experiencing rapid population growth. One of the questions that concerned the decision-makers was whether to increase the medical services in the area by expanding the existing hospital or by building an additional one. The suggestion to build a new hospital raised questions of location. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem. Objective and subjective approaches were employed in a three-stage procedure in order to find the best location. First the problem was analyzed using established location models to generate a set of candidate locations. In the next stages experts evaluated the alternative locations by employing a subjective multicriteria model-the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Finally, a recommended solution was presented and analyzed in light of the strategic plan.