Patient choice and hospital capacity during a pandemic
Monday, July 7, 2014 - 14:31
in Health & Medicine
Allowing patients to choose which hospital they attend when suffering illness during a pandemic rather than assigning them to a specific healthcare facility is appealing to patients during such a crisis. However, such a patient-centric hospital capacity management is conventionally viewed as inefficient system-wide. According to research published in the International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research, an incentive-based approach for hospital capacity management can not only accomplish a high efficiency for a concerned hospital system but satisfy patients' preference on their choice of hospital.