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Associate

Track: Decision Analysis

Telehealth Facility Location Optimization Model

Tuesday, April 13, 2:40-3:20pm EDT

The Telehealth Facility Location Optimization Model was developed as part of the independent research project, Modeling HealthCARE (Capacity, Access, Resource, Evaluation), which is a framework to help organizations make informed decisions about supply and demand. This framework uses modeling and simulation (M&S) to evaluate alternate healthcare delivery solutions and identify potential costly and unforeseen implementation challenges while optimizing capacity, access, and resource utilization. This optimization model seeks to determine where to open facilities to provide telehealth treatment endpoints for patients in rural and underserved areas, and how to allocate demand between open facilities. The model allocates patients by county to existing and potential facility locations, minimizing travel distances for patients. Demand and capacity are measured in terms of the total number of appointments within the planning horizon (e.g., one year). Appointments that cannot be assigned to the open facilities, due to insufficient capacity, are outsourced to out-of-network care.

Deon Burchett image

Deon Burchett

Deon Burchett

Senior Operations Research Analyst at MITRE Corporation

Dr. Deon Burchett is a senior operations research analyst at MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA. He has worked on projects for various government sponsors, including an optimization model for US Air Force aircraft maintenance scheduling and a regression model for manpower planning for the US Army. He has also worked on projects in the MITRE Innovation Program, including a simulation for capacity planning in the context of telehealth treatment adoption. [DAGE1] He previously worked at United Airlines, where he developed optimization-based decision support systems, and at the US Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity in its Logistics Analysis Division. He received his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida.