Some Origins of Operations Research in the Health Services
Operations Research
Managing Patient Service in a Diagnostic Medical Facility
Operations Research
Advancing information technology in health care
Communications of the ACM - One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality
A decision support system for patient scheduling in travel vaccine administration
Decision Support Systems
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Many hospitals face the problem of insufficient capacity to meet demand for inpatient beds, especially during demand surges. This results in quality degradation of patient care due to large delays from admission time to the hospital until arrival at a floor. In addition, there is loss of revenue because of the inability to provide service to potential patients. A solution to the problem is to proactively transfer patients between floors in anticipation of a demand surge. Optimal reallocation poses an extraordinarily complex problem that can be modeled as a finite-horizon Markov decision process. Based on the optimization model, a decision-support system has been developed and implemented at Windham Hospital in Willimantic, Connecticut. Projections from an initial trial period indicate very significant financial gains of about 1% of their total revenue, with no negative impact on any standard quality of care or staffing effectiveness indicators. In addition, the hospital showed a marked improvement in quality of care because of a resulting decrease of almost 50% in the average time that an admitted patient has to wait from admission until being transferred to a floor.