Allocation strategy of medical supplies during a public health emergency: a tripartite evolutionary game perspective

Abstract

Ensuring the rational and orderly circulation of medical supplies during a public health emergency is crucial to quickly containing the further spread of the epidemic and restoring the order of rescue and treatment. However, due to the shortage of medical supplies, there are challenges to rationalizing the allocation of critical medical supplies among multiple parties with conflicting interests. In this paper, a tripartite evolutionary game model is constructed to study the allocation of medical supplies in the rescue environment of public health emergencies under conditions of incomplete information. The game’s players include Government-owned Nonprofit Organizations (GNPOs), hospitals, and the government. By analyzing the equilibrium of the tripartite evolutionary game, this paper makes an in-depth study on the optimal allocation strategy of medical supplies. The findings indicate that: (1) the hospital should reasonably increase its willingness to accept the allocation plan of medical supplies, which can help medical supplies allocate more scientifically. (2) The government should design a reasonable reward and punishment mechanism to ensure the rational and orderly circulation of medical supplies, which can reduce the interference of GNPOs and hospitals in the allocation process of medical supplies. (3) Higher authorities should strengthen the supervision of the government and the accountability for loose supervision. The findings of this research can guide the government in promoting better circulation of medical supplies during public health emergencies by formulating more reasonable allocation schemes of emergency medical supplies, as well as incentives and penalties. At the same time, for GNPOs with limited emergency medical supplies, the equal allocation of emergency supplies is not the optimal solution to improve the efficiency of emergency relief, and it is simpler to achieve the goal of maximizing social benefits by allocating limited emergency resources to the demand points that match the degree of urgency. For example, in Corona Virus Disease 2019, emergency medical supplies should be prioritized for allocation to government-designated fever hospitals that are have a greater need for medical supplies and greater treatment capacity.

Multi-scenario flexible contract coordination for determining the quantity of emergency medical suppliers in public health events

“…Emergency medical supplies are essential resources needed throughout the entire emergency management process in response to major natural disasters, accidents, public health crises, or social security emergencies ( 7 ). These emergency medical supplies possess characteristics of uncertainty, irreplaceability, timeliness, and hysteresis.…”

Optimizing Green Strategy for Retired Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling: An Evolutionary Game Theory Approach

“…Wan et al [48] constructed an evolutionary game model of the government and an online car-hailing platform to study the dilemma of efficient regulation in the development of the online car-hailing industry. Yuan et al [49] constructed a tripartite evolutionary game model of government-owned nonprofit organizations (GNPOs), hospitals, and the government to examine the allocation of medical supplies in a public health emergency. Zhang et al [50] adopted an evolutionary game model to explore the evolutionary mechanism of haze collaborative management between central and local governments.…”

Research on distribution strategy of logistics enterprise alliance based on three-party evolution game

“…Gong et al constructed a three-party evolutionary game model of cloud manufacturing platform, service provider and service demander, and analyzed the evolutionary stabilization strategy 22 . Yuan et al constructed a three-party evolutionary game model to study the allocation of medical supplies in the rescue environment of public health emergencies under the condition of information incompleteness 23 . Wang et al constructed an evolutionary game model of value co-creation in a cloud manufacturing innovation ecosystem, and studied the relationship between platform enterprises and government participation behaviors under dynamic and static reward and punishment mechanisms 24 .…”