Techniques in Modeling Healthcare Operation Data from Hospitals to Improve Scheduling: a Review and Assessment

摘要

The healthcare industry represents 15% of the gross domestic product of the United States, having expenditures of 2.36 trillion USD in 2008. Efficient use of resources is critical in an era of rapidly escalating costs. A healthcare provider operates in a regulated industry in which the quality of its performance is evaluated in terms of the services rendered to the patient and the effectiveness of its process. Part of process performance is balancing the demand (number of patients) and resources. This paper compares and critically appraises methods used to model healthcare operational data to improve patient and staff scheduling.