Assistance to Palliative Pediatric Patients: Simulation Model

Abstract

Pediatric Palliative Cares are an approach which improves patients' and their families' life quality in front of the problem connected with life-threatening and life-limiting diseases. The two current assistance types are Home Integrated Assistance and Hospice, while acute hospital places, in competition against ordinary patients, are required in case of more severe disease phases or lack of alternative possibilities. A stochastic model, describing pediatric palliative assistance behavior and its use by patients, has been built, in order to evidence critical points and possible deficiencies in the assistance network, to suggest remedial work and evaluate consequent effects. Different policies in addressing patients to various assistance types have been examined. The model has been simulated by tool Arena and experimentally applied to Veneto Region in Italy. The results report, for every adopted policy and different resource dimensioning: a) the average number of rejected ordinary patients and respectively palliative patients trying to enter hospital departments, b) the average number of rejected palliative patients trying to enter hospice and respectively home integrated assistance. The scope lays in finding achievable policies reducing total costs.