Performance Assessment of a Rehabilitation Transportation Reservation Matching Service with Market Design Mechanisms

Abstract

Government agencies provide huge amount of subsidies to support the rehabilitation transportation service over the past decade in eastern Taiwan; however, low demand request fulfillment rate, limited medical and transportation resources, long travel distances, and an extremely high percentage of dead mileages are still the main challenges faced by rehabilitation transportation service providers. This study applies the market design theory to match the rehabilitation buses with the requests of patients, so as to improve resource utilization efficiency in rural areas. The developed market design mechanisms aim to allocate resources to those who need them most in a matching manner, by using the deferred acceptance algorithm and the top trading cycle approach. The model is initialized with the requests of those who choose the rehabilitation bus based on their desired boarding time slots. On the other hand, the service providers of the rehabilitation bus would determine patients’ schedule based on their disability level, willingness to share the ride, number of fulfilled appointments during this month, and the travel distance of this trip as the order of preference. Since the current vehicle dispatching rule is to reserve seats of a rehabilitation bus on the “first-come-first-served” basis, and it cannot fully satisfy patients need. In accordance with the historical data, 63 of 72 demand requests could successfully reserve the seats. In the “first-come, first-served” mode, 48 requests obtained the first-ranking shift (i.e., their desired time slots), and the sum of their disability level score is 155. In the market design matching mode, 57 requests obtained the first-ranking shift, and the sum of their disability level score is 170, which demonstrates that the proposed market design matching mechanism outperforms than the conventional rules.