Admission, discharge, and transfer control in patient flow logistics: Overview and future research

Patient flow logistics involves managing and coordinating the movement of patients within a healthcare system. It aims to optimize the patients’ flow from their arrival to discharge or transfer, ensuring efficient and effective use of resources while minimizing delays and bottlenecks. Key components of patient flow logistics include capacity planning, resource allocation, appointment scheduling, and notably, admission, discharge, and transfer control. Our focus is on admission, discharge, and transfer control policies, which manage and regulate the flow of individual patients into and out of various facilities delivering care. We review a selection of 37 analytical, empirical, and experimental papers in this area published in leading operations research, operations management, and medical journals. These papers are categorized based on the specific department they target and the type of policies they consider. In particular, we identify: (i) four types of policies for intensive care units, (ii) three types of policies for emergency departments, and (iii) four types of policies for general wards. For each paper, we provide an overview of the research questions, formulations, solution methodologies, and results. This comprehensive review culminates in identifying future research directions for academics in this field.