Publication:
Estimation of patient flow in hospitals using up-to-date data: application to bed demand prediction during pandemic waves

Date

2023

Authors

López-Cheda, Ana
Jácome, María Amalia

Director

Publisher

Public Library of Science
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa

Project identifier

AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020/PID2020-114031RB-I00/ES/recolecta
AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020/PID2020-113578RB-I00/ES/recolecta
Gobierno de Navarra//0011-3597-2020-000003
Métricas Alternativas

Abstract

Hospital bed demand forecast is a first-order concern for public health action to avoid healthcare systems to be overwhelmed. Predictions are usually performed by estimating patients flow, that is, lengths of stay and branching probabilities. In most approaches in the literature, estimations rely on not updated published information or historical data. This may lead to unreliable estimates and biased forecasts during new or non-stationary situations. In this paper, we introduce a flexible adaptive procedure using only near-real-time information. Such method requires handling censored information from patients still in hospital. This approach allows the efficient estimation of the distributions of lengths of stay and probabilities used to represent the patient pathways. This is very relevant at the first stages of a pandemic, when there is much uncertainty and too few patients have completely observed pathways. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed method is assessed in an extensive simulation study in which the patient flow in a hospital during a pandemic wave is modelled. We further discuss the advantages and limitations of the method, as well as potential extensions.

Description

Keywords

Patient flow, Hospital bed demand, Prediction

Department

Institute of Smart Cities - ISC

Faculty/School

Degree

Doctorate program

item.page.cita

Garcia-Vicuña, D., López-Cheda, A., Jácome, M. A., & Mallor, F. (2023). Estimation of patient flow in hospitals using up-to-date data. Application to bed demand prediction during pandemic waves. PLOS ONE, 18(2), e0282331. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282331

item.page.rights

© 2023 Garcia-Vicuña et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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