Tanzania
Research Article
Strategies for Inpatient Bed Management
Author(s): Eva K. Lee, Zixing Wang and Andriy ShapovalEva K. Lee, Zixing Wang and Andriy Shapoval
We consider the problem of partitioning clinical services in hospitals into groups with the goal of efficiently allocating existing inpatient beds. At the strategic level, there are two major possibilities: pooling versus focusing. Pooling the bed capacity allows one to achieve an overall high occupancy level for a fixed number of beds. On the other hand, focusing by dividing the capacity into groups with restricted access may offer increased efficiency and better resource utilization. We first derive a 2-stage approach to address the 3-fold problem: 1) how many groups of services to form; 2) how many beds to allocate to each group; and 3) how to partition services among the groups. Specifically, Stage 1 uses cluster analysis utilizing the similarity principle for possible advantages of economies of scale. Stage 2 then incorporates utility/ benefit functions to optimize the partitions.. Read More»
DOI:
10.4172/2157-7420.1000308
Journal of Health & Medical Informatics received 2700 citations as per Google Scholar report