Go with the flow

Departments of geriatric medicine consist of two distinct forms of clinical activity: acute/rehabilitative and long stay care. These are organisationally distinct and have very different resource needs. Current hospital planning models, however, assume that patients all move through the system at the same rate, thus ignoring this inherent heterogeneity in patient behaviour. A model has been developed which allows for this. The model may be used to estimate the average numbers and lengths of stay for short- and long-stay patients and assess the effect of system changes such as converting long-stay to short-stay beds. The model has been implemented in a software package for Bed Occupancy, Management and Planning which uses daily bed occupancy census data. It is hoped that such an approach will provide more effective planning for the geriatric hospital service.