Territorial reorganization of regional blood management systems: Evidences from an Italian case study

Blood is a vital resource in the health care context and then its efficient and effective collection, management and distribution is a fundamental task. As blood is drawn on voluntary basis, an appropriate organization of the collection systems on the territory is crucial; in particular, a widespread presence of collection facilities is important to attract potential donors and assure a given blood collection capacity, but it may have also a strong impact on the total management costs. This study is motivated by a project aimed at reorganizing regional blood management systems in Italy, in order to reduce total management costs without compromising the self-sufficiency goal, i.e. the goal of satisfying the blood demand coming from the region. In particular, we formulate the problem as a facility location model and we apply it using real data related to a specific regional context. The obtained results are analyzed and discussed and then some conclusions are drawn.