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Flexible Bed Optimization in a Geriatric Care Setting

Laar, Eva van (2025) Flexible Bed Optimization in a Geriatric Care Setting.

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Abstract:With the growing nursing shortage more patients, who require specialized care outside hospitals, are forced to wait in hospital beds until space is found for them elsewhere. Therefore it is important to optimize the staffing levels in these specialized care facilities. In this report we modeled a geriatric care organization which treats two patients, type 1 and type 2, as a multidimensional markov chain. Each patient could be treated in their respective bed type or in a flexible bed. A bed in our setting represented the staff and resources needed to treat one patient. Our model took into account both costs associated with bed blocking and costs associated with unused resources in order to find which bed configuration has the lowest expected costs. We simulated, through the creation of two discrete event simulations, two types of flexible bed usages: when patients in a flexible bed transfer to their respective standard bed as soon as one is available and when patients remain in the same bed for the entire duration of their treatment. Our simulated results showed that having patients transfer from a flexible bed to a standard bed once one is available is associated with lower expected costs.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Subject:31 mathematics
Programme:Applied Mathematics BSc (56965)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/108010
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