A SCENARIO-BASED APPROACH TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF HEALTHCARE DELIVERY TO STROKE PATIENTS IN THE COMMUNITY

摘要

The objective of this study is to outline a Markov chain model to help to understand, assess and investigate the potentials for improving community-based care delivery processes for stroke patients in the immediate post-discharge period. By using this model, we assess the current system due to the total workload for each health care institution, the expected cost per patient and define the critical paths due to the mortality percentages. We also explore hypothetical scenarios under these quality criteria. Discussion of hypothetical scenarios provides evidence that the model is an effective tool to assess the suggested improvements in the system and investigate potential changes. This approach would therefore seem to be useful in studying the patient paths in the community for any chronic illness.