The Centre for Biostatistics in conjunction with the Department of
Mathematics and Statistics invite you to the third seminar in their
autumn series.
Friday, October 19th, 2:00pm
Room A2002
Adele Marshall,
Queen's University, Belfast
Waiting Patiently: Stochastic Modelling of Times in Hospital
Abstract: The UK National Health Service (NHS) has received a large
amount of media attention concerning their provision of care to the
general public. Under particular scrutiny are long waiting lists for
planned admissions to hospital, queues of waiting patients at Accident &
Emergency (A&E) departments, the resulting trolley waits they accrue,
and long stays in hospital. In 2000, the NHS focused a major drive to
try and reduce patient's total length of stay in hospital. More
recently, attention has now turned to the delays in the admission
process with new targets on the activity in A&E departments being
introduced by the NHS. As such, health care providers are turning to
statistical modelling as a means of representing hospital activity and
efficiency in the wards, not just for A&E but all aspects of patient
care. This paper will provide an overview of current health care models
discussing some of the issues that have been addressed, the recent
developments in stochastic modelling and the further research directions
required to meet the dynamically changing needs of health care systems.
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