An integrated BWM-LBWA-CoCoSo framework for evaluation of healthcare sectors in Eastern Europe

Abstract In this study, an integrated multi-criteria framework is developed to evaluate a healthcare sector which is one of the main infrastructures for any country. Healthcare sector plays a significant role in economic development and social sustainability of countries. To improve performance of healthcare sectors, it is essentially required to evaluate the healthcare systems based on their specific characteristics in order to resolve their performance related issues based on sustainable development principles under social aspect. For this purpose, the proposed integrated framework applies a novel hybrid weight determination model using best-worst method (BWM) and level based weight assessment (LBWA) to determine the weights of healthcare indicators and subsequently, combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) method is further applied to evaluate healthcare performances of several countries according to the pre-determined indicator weights. To show applicability of the proposed framework, a real time case study for seven countries in Eastern Europe is considered based on the data set of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Results show that Lithuania and Slovakia have the best healthcare systems in comparison to countries like Poland and Estonia.