Enhancing simulation analyses of health care delivery policies using SDLTM database capabilities
WSC '81 Proceedings of the 13th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 1
Using simulation in health manpower planning
ACM SIGSIM Simulation Digest
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A combined discrete/continuous simulation model of the primary health care system of Indiana has been developed and implemented in the GASP IV simulation language. The purpose of this model is to project the supply of and demand for primary health care in Indiana from 1970 through 2000. The model has been developed to evaluate the need for additional primary care supply in Indiana, and to assess the effect of exogenous policy changes on performance measures of the Indiana primary health care system. This paper describes the model and its use, however, an emphasis is placed on the data collection aspects of model building. The data to support the model was obtained from many sources. Extensive problems existed in converting the data to a consistent basis. A description of the data sources, the data reduction requirements and the parameter estimation procedures are included in the paper. The primary health care system of Indiana is modeled as having four major components: 1. the providers of primary care; 2. the volume of services of the providers; 3. the population of Indiana; and 4. the volume of services the population demands. Model outputs involved the projection of the four components over time. In working with health man-power policy-makers, it was determined that the following two performance measures were of significant interest: 1. Ratio of the supply of visits to the demand for visits. 2. A normalized difference between the supply of visits and the demand for visits.