Selection and Assessment of Outsourcing Service Suppliers in Hospitals by Multi-criteria Decision Making and Balanced Scorecard Combined Model

Background and Objectives: Selection and evaluation of suppliers is one of the main steps in the coordination and integration of outsourcing service supply chain. Hospitals outsource many of their services to private companies but so far, the issue of this problem has not been investigated by a systematic and scientific method. Thus, in this study, this problem was investigated by multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model with fuzzy analytic hierarchical process (FAHP)-FTOPSIS approach and balanced scorecard (BSC). Methods: This quantitative study was carried out from June to March 2018 in one of the teaching-clinical hospitals in Tehran city (Iran). The supplier selection problem was the MCDM problem, Therefore, AHP-TOPSIS and BSC combined model were proposed and used to select and evaluate the suppliers. Evaluation criteria were weighted using FAHP that was formulated in excel software. Then, based on the weights obtained for the criteria and using the fuzzy TOPSIS technique, we prioritized the suppliers for food service using a survey consisting of 10 officials and experts in the hospital. Findings: Based on the results, customer and financial aspects of BSC weighted 0.358788 and 0.356949 respectively and had the highest priority in experts’ points of view. Among the criteria speed of customer responsiveness (0.108816), the reputation of supplier (0.107017), financial stability (0.098633) and On-time delivery (0.090774) had the highest priorities, respectively. Reliability (0.005542), fame and credit of the supplier (0.005575) repair time (0.005951) and past performance (0.005951) criteria had the lowest priorities. Then three of suppliers were prioritized through fuzzy TOPSIS. Conclusions: The combination of a BSC model and MCDM approaches provide powerful tools for evaluating and selecting suppliers in the supply chain.