An online short-term bed occupancy rate prediction procedure based on discrete event simulation

Abstract

In recent years, population growth and aging society impose large pressure on the resource requirement in Singapore public hospital system. Beds are one of the most critical resources in healthcare system. How to manage beds efficiently is an important and challenging task for the health service providers in any healthcare systems. One frequently used performance indicator of bed management is bed occupancy rate, which measures the bed utilization. In this paper, an online prediction procedure based on discrete event simulation is proposed and developed to predict bed occupancy rate in a short term period. Simulation results show that the predicted values are closer to the actual values with narrower confidence interval compared to the offline approach. Hence such a prediction procedure is able to provide a more reliable reference for decision making of the health service providers.