Capacity planning for long-term care networks

Yan Li, Yi Zhang, Nan Kong and Mark Lawley

IISE Transactions, 2016, vol. 48, issue 12, 1098-1111

Abstract: We study the problem of capacity planning for long-term care services, which is important not only for the elderly and disabled who cannot adequately care for themselves but also for long-term care providers and health policymakers. Patients with long-term care needs usually have to transfer between different settings such as nursing homes and home- and community-based services. We model patient flows among these settings using an open migration network and formulate the planning of the capacity needed to provide long-term care with a newsvendor-type model. We explore the structural properties of the model and identify the most influential factors, such as the penalty cost for capacity shortage and transition rates between different care settings, in making capacity decisions. With the model developed, capacity decisions for long-term care service networks can be made more systematically with full consideration of different patient flow patterns and budget constraints. The research will be especially useful to long-term care policymakers in a state or nationwide given the worsening shortage of care providers and the escalating long-term care needs resulting from population aging.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0740817X.2016.1190480 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:uiiexx:v:48:y:2016:i:12:p:1098-1111

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/0740817X.2016.1190480

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().