Restructuring routine elective services to reduce overall capacity requirements within a local health economy

The UK Government has introduced a new class of health service providers called Treatment Centres that provide routine elective services but that do not deal with emergency cases or non–routine elective patients. The introduction of these centres provides a possible mechanism for improving the efficiency of service delivery in terms of overall capacity requirements. In this paper we discuss a mathematical modelling approach that has been used to examine circumstances under which such benefits might be realised. As an illustration of the analysis, we present results obtained using data concerning urological services, for which there would seem to be benefits associated with the introduction of a TC in only a limited range of circumstances.