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Managing Overcrowding in Healthcare using Fuzzy Logic 207

Results of Expert Knowledge Acquisition

In this section, results from subject matter experts are detailed across five tables. For
each table, the results from ten experts answering five questions are listed, providing a
total of 220 intervals which are used to construct membership functions. This section will
detail the calculation of the fuzzy numbers, based on the results provided by the subject
matter experts. Table 1 contains answers from question one of the survey, in which
experts were posed with a scenario of an emergency room with capacity of 50 beds. The
answers from the expert’s evaluation are divided by 50 to obtain the ratio of waiting
patients to ED capacity, which can be applied to any ED. This question in the survey
specified the minimum and maximum values for the patient demand as 0 and 100,
respectively, in order to introduce boundaries for the membership functions. After
converting these values into ratios, the minimum and maximum values became 0 and 2,
respectively. Experts determined the patient demand on four levels; “low”, “medium”,
“high”, and “very high”. The total number of obtained intervals from question one was
40.
Table 2 contains answers from question two of the survey, which is related to a
scenario with an emergency room capacity of 50 beds. The ratios were obtained from the
answers of subject matter experts. This question in the survey did not specify the
maximum value for the patient demand, meaning that the membership function did not
have an imposed boundary. After converting these values into ratios, the minimum and
maximum values became 0 and 0.32, respectively. Experts determined the patient
demand on three levels; “inadequate”, “partially adequate”, and “adequate”. The total
number of obtained intervals from question two was 30.

Table 1: Interval assignment for Table 2: Interval assignment for
patient demand. physician staffing.

Table 3 contains answers from question three of the survey, which is related to a
scenario with an emergency room capacity of 50 beds. Similarly, in this table, there is no