IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/hcarem/v22y2019i2d10.1007_s10729-018-9439-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Data-driven optimization methodology for admission control in critical care units

Author

Listed:
  • Amirhossein Meisami

    (University of Michigan)

  • Jivan Deglise-Hawkinson

    (Lean Care Solutions Corp)

  • Mark E. Cowen

    (St. Joseph Mercy Hospital)

  • Mark P. Oyen

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

The decision of whether to admit a patient to a critical care unit is a crucial operational problem that has significant influence on both hospital performance and patient outcomes. Hospitals currently lack a methodology to selectively admit patients to these units in a way that patient health risk metrics can be incorporated while considering the congestion that will occur. The hospital is modeled as a complex loss queueing network with a stochastic model of how long risk-stratified patients spend time in particular units and how they transition between units. A Mixed Integer Programming model approximates an optimal admission control policy for the network of units. While enforcing low levels of patient blocking, we optimize a monotonic dual-threshold admission policy. A hospital network including Intermediate Care Units (IMCs) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) was considered for validation. The optimized model indicated a reduction in the risk levels required for admission, and weekly average admissions to ICUs and IMCs increased by 37% and 12%, respectively, with minimal blocking. Our methodology captures utilization and accessibility in a network model of care pathways while supporting the personalized allocation of scarce care resources to the neediest patients. The interesting benefits of admission thresholds that vary by day of week are studied.

Suggested Citation

  • Amirhossein Meisami & Jivan Deglise-Hawkinson & Mark E. Cowen & Mark P. Oyen, 2019. "Data-driven optimization methodology for admission control in critical care units," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 318-335, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:hcarem:v:22:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10729-018-9439-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s10729-018-9439-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10729-018-9439-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10729-018-9439-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan E. Helm & Mark P. Van Oyen, 2014. "Design and Optimization Methods for Elective Hospital Admissions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1265-1282, December.
    2. Carri W. Chan & Vivek F. Farias & Nicholas Bambos & Gabriel J. Escobar, 2012. "Optimizing Intensive Care Unit Discharge Decisions with Patient Readmissions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(6), pages 1323-1341, December.
    3. Muer Yang & Michael J. Fry & Corey Scurlock, 2015. "The ICU will see you now: efficient–equitable admission control policies for a surgical ICU with batch arrivals," IISE Transactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(6), pages 586-599, June.
    4. Mark W. Isken, 2002. "Modeling And Analysis Of Occupancy Data: A Healthcare Capacity Planning Application," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(04), pages 707-729.
    5. Diwas Singh KC & Christian Terwiesch, 2012. "An Econometric Analysis of Patient Flows in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(1), pages 50-65, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonneuil, Noël, 2021. "Optimal age- and sex-based management of the queue to ventilators during the Covid-19 crisis," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jie Bai & Andreas Fügener & Jochen Gönsch & Jens O. Brunner & Manfred Blobner, 2021. "Managing admission and discharge processes in intensive care units," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 666-685, December.
    2. Jillian A. Berry Jaeker & Anita L. Tucker, 2017. "Past the Point of Speeding Up: The Negative Effects of Workload Saturation on Efficiency and Patient Severity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(4), pages 1042-1062, April.
    3. Huiyin Ouyang & Nilay Tanık Argon & Serhan Ziya, 2020. "Allocation of Intensive Care Unit Beds in Periods of High Demand," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 591-608, March.
    4. Carri W. Chan & Vivek F. Farias & Gabriel J. Escobar, 2017. "The Impact of Delays on Service Times in the Intensive Care Unit," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2049-2072, July.
    5. Jie Bai & Andreas Fügener & Jan Schoenfelder & Jens O. Brunner, 2018. "Operations research in intensive care unit management: a literature review," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-24, March.
    6. Wenqi Hu & Carri W. Chan & José R. Zubizarreta & Gabriel J. Escobar, 2018. "An Examination of Early Transfers to the ICU Based on a Physiologic Risk Score," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 531-549, July.
    7. Li, Na & Zhang, Yue & Teng, De & Kong, Nan, 2021. "Pareto optimization for control agreement in patient referral coordination," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    8. Seokjun Youn & H. Neil Geismar & Michael Pinedo, 2022. "Planning and scheduling in healthcare for better care coordination: Current understanding, trending topics, and future opportunities," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4407-4423, December.
    9. Na Geng & Xiaolan Xie, 2022. "Managing Advance Admission Requests for Obstetric Care," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 1224-1239, March.
    10. Ingolfsson, Armann & Almehdawe, Eman & Pedram, Ali & Tran, Monica, 2020. "Comparison of fluid approximations for service systems with state-dependent service rates and return probabilities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 562-575.
    11. Jim G. Dai & Pengyi Shi, 2021. "Recent Modeling and Analytical Advances in Hospital Inpatient Flow Management," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(6), pages 1838-1862, June.
    12. Azcarate, Cristina & Esparza, Laida & Mallor, Fermin, 2020. "The problem of the last bed: Contextualization and a new simulation framework for analyzing physician decisions," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    13. Silviya Valeva & Guodong Pang & Andrew J. Schaefer & Gilles Clermont, 2023. "Acuity-Based Allocation of ICU-Downstream Beds with Flexible Staffing," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 35(2), pages 403-422, March.
    14. Alex F. Mills & Jonathan E. Helm & Yu Wang, 2021. "Surge Capacity Deployment in Hospitals: Effectiveness of Response and Mitigation Strategies," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(2), pages 367-387, March.
    15. Jingui Xie & Weifen Zhuang & Marcus Ang & Mabel C. Chou & Li Luo & David D. Yao, 2021. "Analytics for Hospital Resource Planning—Two Case Studies," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(6), pages 1863-1885, June.
    16. Jinsheng Chen & Jing Dong & Pengyi Shi, 2020. "A survey on skill-based routing with applications to service operations management," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 96(1), pages 53-82, October.
    17. Karsten Schwarz & Michael Römer & Taïeb Mellouli, 2019. "A data-driven hierarchical MILP approach for scheduling clinical pathways: a real-world case study from a German university hospital," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(2), pages 597-636, December.
    18. Mirko Kremer & Francis de Véricourt, 2022. "Mismanaging diagnostic accuracy under congestion," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-22-01, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    19. Maria R. Ibanez & Michael W. Toffel, 2020. "How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food-Safety Inspections," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(6), pages 2396-2416, June.
    20. Michael Freeman & Susan Robinson & Stefan Scholtes, 2021. "Gatekeeping, Fast and Slow: An Empirical Study of Referral Errors in the Emergency Department," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4209-4232, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:hcarem:v:22:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10729-018-9439-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.