Applying Gravity model to predict demand of public hospital beds

Publication date: June 2018Source: Operations Research for Health Care, Volume 17Author(s): Kiok Liang Teow, Kelvin Bryan Tan, Hwee Pin Phua, Zhecheng ZhuAbstractSingapore is an urban country of about 700 km2 with a total population of 5.6 million. In 2015, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH) became the 7th public acute general hospital to provide multi-disciplinary acute inpatient, specialist outpatient clinic services (SOC) and a 24-hour emergency department (ED). To prepare for increasing inpatient demand resulting from aging and population growth, Singapore has planned for two more public hospitals to be ready by 2018 and 2022. In Singapore, patients have the freedom of choice to use any hospital.With the opening of each new hospital, existing hospitals may see their workload being affected. We aim to estimate the demand of the new hospital to plan for its infrastructure and manpower using Gravity model analysis.We used empirical patient days of existing hospitals, and residential addresses to calibrate the “Gravity mass” coefficients of each hospital. We then used these coefficients to predict the new redistribution of market catchment after NTFGH was opened. We also compared the gravity coefficients of different service types and showed the differences. The results indicated some hospitals were more “attractive”. The short-term predictions for redistribution were also fairly good. Hence, with this Gravity model, we are hopeful to estimate future hospitals’ d...
Source: Operations Research for Health Care - Category: Hospital Management Source Type: research