Capital budgeting in health organizations: application of the multicriteria method PROMETHEE V

There are two outstanding characteristics of the capital budgeting process in health organizations: qualitative factors are considered in the decision process, and organizations are subject to severe financial constraints. The first of these characteristics suggests multicritera methods to be applied to the problem, and the second one recommends using mathematical programming techniques to select the feasible subset of alternatives that maximizes benefits. The proposal in this paper is to use the multicriteria method PROMETHEE V, based on a fuzzy outranking relationship, which meets both requirements. The analysis of the advantages and limitations of the method is illustrated with an application to an actual case.