Priority setting in the Brazilian emergency medical service: a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).

Background: Despite the proven value of multicriteria decision analysis in the health field, there is a lack of studies focused on prioritising victims in the Emergency Medical Service, EMS. With this, and knowing that the decision maker needs a direction on which choice may be the most appropriate, based on different and often conflicting criteria. The current work developed a new model for prioritizing victims of SAMU/192, based on the multicriteria decision methodology, taking into account the scarcity of resources.

Multi-criteria analysis in the health area: selection of the most appropriate triage system for the emergency care units in natal.

Background: Multiobjective decision-making processes present a high degree of complexity in their solution, and tools such as multicriteria decision analysis appear as a way to facilitate the decision-makers' solution and ensure that the decision is made cohesively and efficiently. In the public health sector, decisions are even more delicate because they work not only with the direct influence of human needs, but also with limited financial resources. An important point for the emergency care units is the triage system, which consists of a pre-evaluation of the patients, classifying them according to the degree of life risk.

Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) in health care: a systematic review of the main characteristics and methodological steps.

Background: The health area is one of the most affected systems on the perspective of decision-making with multiobjectives, thus becoming prone to errors in the final solution, however, multicriteria decision analysis (MDCA) appears as an aid tool for this process decision-making. Therefore,the present study aims to analyze and synthesize articles found in the literature, involing MCDA in health care, evaluating general issues and methodological aspects, structuring them in a single work.

Methods: Surveys in the bibliographic databases SCOPUS and PUBMED indicated 1852 documents on the subject, however after a careful verificatios, 66 studies were selected to be analyzed completely.