Waiting lists in Spanish public hospitals: a system dynamics approach
✍ Scribed by Begoña González-Busto; Rafael García
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 271 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0883-7066
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Long waiting lists is one of the major problems faced by the Spanish National Health Service. As a result of the political and social concern generated by the long periods of time patients have to wait to receive medical care, policies have been designed in order to shorten or even eliminate these lists. Since most of the research work analyzing waiting lists in Spain, has up to now, been based on Queuing Theory, we considered building a simulation model in order to improve our understanding of how waiting lists behave over time and to analyze the long-term eectiveness of the policies commonly used when managing them. This simulation model includes the policies currently in practice (subcontracting activities to public and privately owned hospitals, the so-called ``special programs'', waiting list updating or revision) and some new proposals (capacity investment decision and staggering of the vacation periods). Simulation with the model enables us to make some recommendations as to the usefulness and the long-term impact of these policies.