Martin Comis: Robust Primary Care Systems

 

Already today there is a shortage of up to 1,000 general practitioners (GPs) in rural areas [31]. Planning a sustainable supply in the future is even more important, since the number of elderly people in these areas will increase as younger people tend to move to urban areas [62]. Currently, the government creates incentives, such as higher compensation, improved childcare facilities and attractive leisure time activities to persuade GPs to settle aside big cities. Yet, these incentives do not seem sufficient to overcome the shortage.

The Statutory health insurance pursues a different approach. To ensure and to improve ambulatory care in rural areas, it demands the setup and promotion of mobile medical units [34]. Combining mobile medical units with a centralized appointment scheduling for patients and a transportation system will efficiently increase the medical care in rural areas. In this project we investigate how such a mobile medical care system can be implemented by investigating the following three subproblems:

1. the determination of the best location of the mobile medical units,

2. the setup of a transportation system from the patient to the treatment location, and

3. the organization of a centralized appointment scheduling.