Research on Capacity Allocation of Hospital Beds Used for Emergency and Elective Patients Considering Seasonal Effects

Abstract

Hospital bed resources need to be managed efficiently for an emergency. The random arrival of emergency patients causes difficulties in the management of hospital beds. Thus, given the uncertainty in the arrival of emergency patients, a simulation model is established for the capacity allocation of hospital beds. Considering the seasonal effects, different seasonality levels are calculated by using real data from hospitals. Then, different bed allocation strategies considering and not considering seasonal adjustment are obtained by different parameter settings. The research results show that the allocated capacity decreases with the decrease in r value for emergency patients. The capacity allocated to the patients increases with the decrease in r value due to the decrease of the total capacity allocated to the emergency patients. With the decrease in the value, the difference in capacity between the elective and emergency patients is evenly distributed. The strategies in this study provide a reference for the capacity allocation of hospital beds.