Evaluation method of medical service system based on DEMATEL and the information entropy: A case study of hypertension diagnosis and treatment in China

Implementation of Intrahospital Transfer Strategy During COVID-19 and Identification of Success Factors Based on DEMATEL Technique

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant strain on world health care systems. The lack of trained and experienced staff was a complicated issue during the pandemic. To overcome insufficient staffing problems, the intrahospital transfer (IHT) strategy was implemented at Milad Hospital in Tehran during COVID-19. We evaluated the effectiveness of the IHT strategy in order to determine whether the strategy should be continued post-COVID.

METHODS

Six supervisors with experience in COVID-19 wards and the IHT strategy were consulted to identify the advantages of continuing the IHT strategy and to evaluate the success and continuation of IHT factors. Then, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method was used to establish a network of influence relationships among IHT strategy factors' success.

RESULTS

The result showed that all criteria except increasing patient satisfaction (C1) and reducing waste of time (C8) are cause-and-effect criteria that affected other criteria.

CONCLUSION

The research findings have implications for improving the day-to-day experience of staff navigating transfers of patients between wards and paraclinic units. This study also highlights the theoretical value of the cross-disciplinary integration of medical decision issues and multiple-attribute decision-making methodologies.

Medical service quality evaluation based on LDA and sentiment analysis: Examples of seven chronic diseases

Objective

In this article, we investigate how chronic noncommunicable disease (CND) patients evaluate the medical service, and what obstacles exist in this process, which is useful for hospitals to improve efficiency and enhance patient satisfaction.

Methods

Based on the total number of CND patients in China, 7 CNDs were selected as the evaluation objects, and then selected the Haodaifu website as the data source, crawled 15,682 medical service reviews, then the 9 themes were analyzed by the LDA theme model. The evaluation index system of six indicators was constructed based on quality management theory. The binary long short-term memory model was used to analyze the sentiment, and the entropy-valued, TOPSIS and gray correlation model was implemented for medical service quality evaluation; the barrier model was used to find out the key factors limiting medical services.

Results

(a) Hypertension was rated at a good level in the degree of gray correlation closeness, bronchitis was rated at a low level and the rest were at an intermediate level. (b) The first two overall barriers were the hospitalization process and registration services which occupy about 30%, respectively. This implies that hospitals should focus on providing registration services and inpatient settings in the future.

Conclusion

To promote hospitals to provide better services for patients with CNDs and improve patient satisfaction with medical care. And it is necessary to optimize medical services fundamentally by optimizing the inpatient process and improving the registration process to improve efficiency.

Success factors of health promotion: Evaluation by DEMATEL and M-DEMATEL methods - A case study in a non-profit organization

Proper health knowledge and adequate motivation for health activities are key factors that influence an individual to adopt a healthy behavior. Health promotion positively influences progressive behaviors that seek to advance health potential, to continuously improve one's lifestyle. There are many health promotion indications constantly encouraging people to eat healthier food. Based on the successful experience of a non-profit organization promoting a healthier vegetarian diet, this research identifies the operating factors that lead to the success of health promotion. The formulation and implementation of the health promotion strategy must be combined with the key success factors in order to accomplish the objectives. This study assessed seven factors, evaluated using the proposed method. The proposed Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method constructs the cause and effect model of health promotion, and places forward suggestions and strategies for improvement based on the evaluation of the results. This research compared the original DEMATEL with a Modified DEMATEL (M-DEMATEL) to identify the success factors of health promotion. According to the results of both methods, "leadership", "communication channel" and "budget" are the most important and influential factors when promoting healthy diets. The results have shown the connection and the difference between the two methods. The main purpose of this research is not to determine which method is the best method, instead, to derive the combined effect of both methods.