Modelling admissions booking of elective in-patients into a treatment centre

As part of the modernisation of the UK National Health Service,specialist centres called treatment centres are being introducedthat cater solely for routine elective treatment for a relativelysmall number of conditions. In principle, such centres can adoptnew methods of operation, e.g. organising booked admissionson a cyclic basis, organised to make efficient use of treatmentresources. Assuming such a mode of operation, explicit cyclicformulae are derived for the mean and variance of bed demand.These take account of systematic differences between the lengthsof stay of different patient groups and also the effects ofemergency admissions. Using these formulae, optimisation methodsare discussed that have the potential for contributing to resourceplanning and to assist the process of booking patient admissions.Such optimisation methods can be used to help reduce overallcapacity needs or, conversely, to make better use of the capacityavailable.