Forecasts of hospital activity for resource management

Hospital activity have been reduced over the past decades through optimization of resource usage. This optimization has led to a shift from long admittances of patients to more outpatient visits and shorter admittances in general. This development seems to have reached the lower boundary of optimization the past five years, such that further optimization seems difficult. To aide future hospital management, we need forecasting tools to support decision making and resource prioritization.

In Danish Center for Health Services Research we develop, implement, and test forecasting models of hospital activity in general, and within the fields of infectious disease, acute care, and psychiatry specifically. Our models combine stochastic processes with dynamic systems to reach the optimal balance between model transparency and flexibility. Our goal is to have a fully implemented management level forecasting tool both for short- and long term capacity planning in North Denmark Region.

The research program is in cooperation with Aalborg University Hospital represented by Department of Infectious Diseases, BI and Analysis, Center for Prehospital and Acute Medicine Research, and Psychiatry Region North Denmark.

The research program is financially supported by Psychiatry Region North Denmark.