Developing a platform for comparison of hospital admission systems : an illustration

There is an increasing need to develop a platform for comparing hospital admission planning systems due to a shift in the service paradigm in the health sector. The current service concept of hospital admission planning aims at optimising the use of scarce hospital resources without paying much attention to the level of service offered to patients. As patients nowadays do not accept long waiting times for hospital admission, it becomes necessary to consider alternative admission service concepts. Waiting lists have also become a political issue, and alternative concepts have been advocated such as giving all patients an appointment for admission. A simulation model was built to examine the impacts of extreme admission service concepts in a simplified hospital setting. The alternative concepts considered are based on the ‘zero waiting time’ principle (immediate treatment), and the ‘booked admissions’ principle (using an appointment for admission). The results of these admission service concepts are compared with the results of the current concept, based on the ‘maximising resource use’ principle. The paper deals with the development of a framework and tool that allows evaluating different, somehow conflicting, hospital admission planning concepts and the usefulness of such framework and tool for more refined/real-life approaches to hospital admission planning.