An Optimization-Based Framework to Dynamically Schedule Hospital Beds in a Pandemic.

IF 2.7 4区 医学 Q2 HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES
Marwan Shams Eddin, Hussein El Hajj
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: Emerging pandemics can rapidly overwhelm hospital capacity, leading to increased mortality and healthcare costs. Objective: We develop an optimization-based framework that dynamically schedules hospital beds across multiple facilities to minimize total healthcare costs, including patient rejections and logistical expenses, under resource constraints. Methods: The model integrates several real-world flexibilities: standard hospital beds, buffer capacity from non-pandemic wards, in situ field hospitals, and inter-hospital patient transfers. To capture demand uncertainty, we link the model with an SEIRD epidemic forecasting approach and further extend it with a robust optimization variant that safeguards against worst-case surges. Recognizing computational challenges, we reformulate the problem to significantly reduce solution times and derive structural properties that provide guidance on when to open field hospitals, allocate buffer beds, and prioritize patients across facilities. Results: A case study based on COVID-19 data from Northern Virginia shows that the proposed framework reduces healthcare costs by more than 50% compared with current practice, mainly by lowering patient rejection rates. Conclusions: These results highlight the value of combining epidemic forecasting with prescriptive optimization to improve resilience and inform healthcare policy during crises.

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基于优化的流感大流行医院床位动态调度框架
背景:新出现的流行病可迅速使医院不堪重负,导致死亡率和医疗费用上升。目的:我们开发了一个基于优化的框架,该框架可以在资源受限的情况下动态安排多个设施的医院床位,以最大限度地降低医疗保健总成本,包括患者排斥和后勤费用。方法:该模型整合了几个现实世界的灵活性:标准医院病床、非流行病病房的缓冲能力、现场野战医院和医院间患者转移。为了捕捉需求不确定性,我们将模型与SEIRD流行病预测方法联系起来,并进一步扩展为一个鲁棒优化变体,以防止最坏情况的激增。认识到计算方面的挑战,我们重新制定了这个问题,以显著减少解决时间,并得出结构特性,为何时开放野战医院、分配缓冲床位和优先考虑不同设施的患者提供指导。结果:一项基于北弗吉尼亚州COVID-19数据的案例研究表明,与目前的做法相比,拟议的框架将医疗成本降低了50%以上,主要是通过降低患者的排异率。结论:这些结果突出了将流行病预测与处方优化相结合的价值,以提高危机期间的应变能力并为卫生保健政策提供信息。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Healthcare
Healthcare Medicine-Health Policy
CiteScore
3.50
自引率
7.10%
发文量
0
审稿时长
47 days
期刊介绍: Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal (free for readers), which publishes original theoretical and empirical work in the interdisciplinary area of all aspects of medicine and health care research. Healthcare publishes Original Research Articles, Reviews, Case Reports, Research Notes and Short Communications. We encourage researchers to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. For theoretical papers, full details of proofs must be provided so that the results can be checked; for experimental papers, full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Additionally, electronic files or software regarding the full details of the calculations, experimental procedure, etc., can be deposited along with the publication as “Supplementary Material”.
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