Managing the load

Melbourne researchers are hoping to ease the strain of bed shortages and limited resources in Australian hospitals by developing mathematical, statistical and software tools that will enable hospital managers to see where queues or available resources exist within the hospital system.

The University of Melbourne’s Professor of Operations Research Peter Taylor says, “Australian hospitals have difficulty managing increasing demand and need to adopt new approaches to service provision and patient management if they hope to maintain an acceptable quality of service.”

“The problem is, understanding the dynamic relationship between the range of factors such as available beds, waiting lists, equipment, and so on, has become complex to the point where it exceeds human ability to understand how an individual decision will affect the system as a whole.”

“The result is that queues can form, ambulances can be forced to bypass hospitals and waiting times for surgery can grow.”