Waiting time for cardiac surgery is a significant problem in the current medical world. The fact that patients length of stay varies considerably makes effective hospital operation a hard job. In this paper, the patients length of stay is analyzed. Three scenarios for hospital management are presented and evaluated in two ways. First, the theoretical number of beds needed in each of these scenarios is analyzed using techniques from Markov chain theory. This analysis does not include the important variability in length of stay. Therefore, the second evaluation is based on simulation experiments to further investigate the variability. The aim of the analyses is to look at unused bed capacity in the hospital wards. By knowing the size of the unused bed capacity, it is possible to come to a more efficient reallocation of the beds. The results presented in this paper provide some insight in the relation between patients length of stay, bed availability and hospital waiting lists. Finally, some ideas are raised as discussion points for further research.
| Place of Publication | Groningen |
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| Publisher | SOM Research School |
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| Publication status | Published - 2002 |
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| Externally published | Yes |
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| Series | SOM Research Report |
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| Number | A63 |
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