Parametric modeling of the hospital activity applied to the simulation of patients in waiting-list

Hospital activity is characterized by the occupation percentage, number of discharges in the hospital departments, and the flow of patients in the waiting-list. The number of patients in the waiting-list is a function of the number of admission requests and the available time at the operating theatres. This available time depends on the number of surgical interventions and the mean time for surgery. This paper presents a methodology for model identification of the system that controls the number of patients in the waiting-list applied to different surgeries. The model parameters have been estimated and the models have been used for simulation. The evaluation of results are analyzed considering the mean percentage and the mean absolute errors. With these models we have obtained simulations of different surgeries with a mean absolute error less than four patients in waiting-list with a reduced number of parameters for all the considered surgeries. This paper is an initial work in the area of hospital management for the simulation and future prediction of the waiting-list for any surgery of the hospital