Article ID: | iaor20022870 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 53 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 19 |
End Page Number: | 24 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2002 |
Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
Authors: | McClean S.I., Millard P.H., Gorunescu F. |
Keywords: | queues: applications |
The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to describe the movement of patients through a hospital department by using classical queueing theory and, on the other hand, to present a way of optimising the use of hospital resources in order to improve hospital care. A queueing model is used to determine the main characteristics of the access of patients to hospital, such as mean bed occupancy and the probability that a demand for hospital care is lost because all beds are occupied. Moreover, we present a technique for optimising the number of beds in order to maintain an acceptable delay probability at a sufficiently low level and, finally, a way of optimising the average cost per day by balancing costs of empty beds against costs of delayed patients.