Modelling resource availability in general hospitals, design and implementation of a decision support model

Admission planning in general hospitals means selecting elective patients from a waiting list in order to obtain optimal utilisation of the available beds, nursing staff and operating theatre facilities while taking into account emergency admissions. Also, a wide variety of other factors, often situational and not explicitly stated, play a part in this decision process. As such, it is a complex problem which is difficult to handle for any decision maker. In this paper a statistical model for the prediction of resource availability is presented. The model is first tested on empirical data. On the basis of the model a DSS was designed which is now in daily use in several hospitals. Problems encountered in that implementation process will be stated. The results obtained with the model show that such an approach based on statistical data provides sufficiently accurate results to be useful.