Prioritizing patients for intensive care: Triage by analytic hierarchy process

초록

Intensive care is an expensive medical therapy with limited capacity whose allocation has a significant impact on the efficiency of the hospital administration as well as the welfare of the patients. Triage, the decisions on admission, discharge and treatment, is an important and essential part of an Intensive Care Unit's (ICU) day-to-day operating decisions. Yet, the rules governing the triage process are largely subjective without clear criteria. This paper develops a multi-criteria model for triage decisions by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model. Real-life cases are used for illustration.