IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/thssxx/v9y2020i3p202-211.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hospital’s instability wedges

Author

Listed:
  • David Ben-Tovim
  • Tim Bogomolov
  • Jerzy Filar
  • Paul Hakendorf
  • Shaowen Qin
  • Campbell Thompson

Abstract

In this study, we define a hospital congestion episode as a situation where the number of new patients needing admission is greater than the number of available beds in the hospital, and investigate the likelihood that the current day’s midnight occupancy will exceed any specified threshold level. We demonstrate that this measure of risk exhibits a characteristic sensitivity phenomenon that we have named as hospital’s instability wedge. In particular, it is seen that frequently even small changes in the numbers of patients admitted or discharged can dramatically change the risk of exceeding the threshold, thereby changing the risk of subsequent congestion episodes. While this finding captures a salient difficulty of operating a modern public hospital, it also opens up an opportunity for monitoring and alleviating the above defined risk with only small changes in admission, discharge, and cancellation rates. A case study with recent patient journey data from Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia is presented.

Suggested Citation

  • David Ben-Tovim & Tim Bogomolov & Jerzy Filar & Paul Hakendorf & Shaowen Qin & Campbell Thompson, 2020. "Hospital’s instability wedges," Health Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(3), pages 202-211, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:thssxx:v:9:y:2020:i:3:p:202-211
    DOI: 10.1080/20476965.2018.1524407
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20476965.2018.1524407
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/20476965.2018.1524407?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:thssxx:v:9:y:2020:i:3:p:202-211. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/thss .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.