Fuzzy linguistic preference relations approach: Evaluation in quality of healthcare

Abstract

This study proposes a linguistic preference relations approach to evaluate the quality of healthcare under a fuzzy environment. Pairwise comparisons are utilized to derive the importance weights of evaluation criteria and to obtain the performance rating of feasible healthcare organizations. The subjectivity and vagueness in the evaluation processes are dealt with linguistic variables parameterized by triangular fuzzy numbers. By calculating the distance of each feasible healthcare organization to the fuzzy positive ideal reference point (FPIRP) and the fuzzy negative ideal reference point (FNIRP) respectively, a closeness coefficient is obtained and utilized to rank the order of all feasible healthcare organizations. A case is simultaneously shown to demonstrate the computational procedures of this proposed approach. © Springer International Publishing 2013.