Analytical Techniques to Support Hospital Case Mix Planning

TL;DR

This paper presents analytical techniques and a decision support tool for hospital capacity planning and case mix optimization, integrating optimization models and multi-objective decision-making within an Excel-based tool to enhance hospital capacity management.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimization model and decision-making techniques embedded in an Excel VBA tool for improved hospital case mix planning and capacity assessment.

Findings

The optimization model effectively analyzes case mix changes.

The decision-making techniques facilitate comparison of competing solutions.

The Excel VBA tool provides practical, quantitative capacity assessments.

Abstract

This article introduces analytical techniques and a decision support tool to support capacity assessment and case mix planning (CMP) approaches previously created for hospitals. First, an optimization model is proposed to analyse the impact of making a change to an existing case mix. This model identifies how other patient types should be altered proportionately to the changing levels of hospital resource availability. Then we propose multi-objective decision-making techniques to compare and critique competing case mix solutions obtained. The proposed techniques are embedded seamlessly within an Excel Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) personal decision support tool (PDST), for performing informative quantitative assessments of hospital capacity. The PDST reports informative metrics of difference and reports the impact of case mix modifications on the other types of patient present. The techniques developed in this article provide a bridge between theory and practice that is currently missing and provides further situational awareness around hospital capacity.