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. 2021 Jun;24(2):286-304.
doi: 10.1007/s10729-020-09543-z. Epub 2021 Apr 11.

An integer programming model to assign patients based on mental health impact for tele-psychotherapy intervention during the Covid-19 emergency

Andrés Miniguano-Trujillo  1 , Fernanda Salazar  2 , Ramiro Torres  2 , Patricio Arias  3 , Koraima Sotomayor  4
Affiliations

An integer programming model to assign patients based on mental health impact for tele-psychotherapy intervention during the Covid-19 emergency

Andrés Miniguano-Trujillo et al. Health Care Manag Sci. 2021 Jun.

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic challenges healthcare systems worldwide while severely impacting mental health. As a result, the rising demand for psychological assistance during crisis times requires early and effective intervention. This contributes to the well-being of the public and front-line workers and prevents mental health disorders. Many countries are offering diverse and accessible services of tele-psychological intervention; Ecuador is not the exception. The present study combines statistical analyses and discrete optimization techniques to solve the problem of assigning patients to therapists for crisis intervention with a single tele-psychotherapy session. The statistical analyses showed that professionals and healthcare workers in contact with Covid-19 patients or with a confirmed diagnosis had a significant relationship with suicide risk, sadness, experiential avoidance, and perception of severity. Moreover, some Covid-19-related variables were found to be predictors of sadness and suicide risk as unveiled via path analysis. This allowed categorizing patients according to their screening and grouping therapists according to their qualifications. With this stratification, a multi-periodic optimization model and a heuristic are proposed to find an adequate assignment of patients to therapists over time. The integer programming model was validated with real-world data, and its results were applied in a volunteer program in Ecuador.

Keywords: AAQ-II; Integer programming; Logistic regression; SARS–CoV2; Tele-psychotherapy; WLSMV.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Patients Categories
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Therapist Categories
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Relationships between variables with the WSLMV method. The weights are standardized
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Affinity relationship between categories of patients and groups of therapists
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Periodic assignment of fifth group for instance I1. Therapists are labeled with capital letters A to F
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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