ER Design

A hospital administrator is reviewing departmental requests prior to the design of a new emergency room. At issue is the number of beds for each department. The current plans call for a 15,000 square foot facility, and departmental data is as follows.

where is the number of beds requested in department i, is the cost per bed, is the square-feet of area per bed, and are the department's peak requirements (maximum number of patients seen at one time).

The hospital board has established the following goals;

1. Avoid overspending the $300,000 budget
2. Avoid a plan requiring more than 15,000 square feet
3. Meet peak requirements (Surgical and Medical can be interchanged, but Major Trauma patients cannot use other facilities and its peak requirements must be fulfilled)
4. Meet the departmental requests. (This goal is viewed as being twice as important as any of the others.)

Formulate a goal program to help the hospital administrator make this decision.