Prioritization of health service failures a novel cost-based framework

This paper proposes an integrated approach to identify, evaluate, and improve the potential failures in a service setting. In this paper a new integrated approach is developed to improve the method of Service Failure Mode Effects and Critically Analysis (FMEA) from an economic perspective. The contribution of this paper is that it combines a fuzzy cost-based FMEA, GRA (grey relational analysis) and Priority-Cost FMEA for better prioritization of the service failures by considering cost as an important issue and using the profitability theory in a way that consider the corrective action cost. In addition, the proposed approach allows accounting for opinions of several experts for estimating the cost of each service failure. A numerical example illustrates the application of this method to a service process proposed in the literature. The paper concludes with a conclusion, limitations and recommendations for future studies.