Patient diversion using real-time delay predictions across healthcare facility networks

Najiya Fatma () and Varun Ramamohan ()
Additional contact information
Najiya Fatma: Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Varun Ramamohan: Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, 2023, vol. 45, issue 2, No 4, 437-476

Abstract: Abstract This work demonstrates how real-time delay prediction can be used to determine patient diversion across a healthcare facility network. This work presents diversion mechanisms based on real-time predictions of delays at the facilities from which the patient is being diverted as well as at the facility to which diversion is planned. This involves predicting real-time delays not only at the point in time at which the patient arrives at the facility of origin, but also at the near future time point at which the patient may arrive at the facility considered for diversion. Both actual delays and delay predictions based on system state information such as queue length and elapsed service time are considered in the implementation of our proposed diversion mechanism. The implementation of the diversion mechanism is illustrated via a discrete-event simulation of a network of nine primary healthcare facilities in a given region. Diversion is implemented for childbirth patients and inpatients treated at these facilities. As part of this, a novel approximate real-time delay predictor is developed for the queuing systems represented by the childbirth and inpatient care processes, and its performance is compared to existing delay predictors for these queuing systems. With regard to simulation experiments, the conditions under which generation of delay predictions in the near future is relevant is first investigated. The proposed diversion mechanism is simulated, and it is shown that the extent to which operational outcomes become equitably distributed across the PHC networks depends upon the accuracy of the delay predictor.

Keywords: OR in health services; Patient diversion; Real-time delay prediction; Healthcare facility networks; Discrete-event simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00291-022-00704-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:orspec:v:45:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s00291-022-00704-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... research/journal/291

DOI: 10.1007/s00291-022-00704-w

Access Statistics for this article

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management is currently edited by Rainer Kolisch

More articles in OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management from Springer, Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().