226. Improving access to long-term care
Invited abstract in session FA-3: Elderly care, stream Sessions.
Friday, 9:00-10:30Room: NTNU, Realfagbygget R9
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | René Bekker
|
| Vrije Universiteit |
Abstract
In many countries, the rapid aging of the population leads to an additional burden on already stretched long-term care (LTC) systems. This often manifests itself in excessive waiting times for long-term care centers, in abandonments (i.e., patients passing away while they are waiting), and in temporary placements in short-term care (STC) facilities. Interestingly, in practice, long waiting times are not only caused by a lack of available total capacity in the system, but by systematic inefficiencies in the allocation of patients, each with their personal preferences and (in)flexibility, to geographically distributed care centers.
Motivated by this challenge, we propose a new and practical method for optimally allocating patients-in-need to nursing homes, balancing waiting time performance with individual preferences and flexibility levels. Using a Markov Decision Process, we derive the optimal placement policy and show that, for small instances, the allocation model achieves a mean optimality gap of just 1.3%. We validate our approach through a simulation study based on real-world data from somatic patient placements in the Amsterdam region. To capture the broader system impact, we adopt a system-wide perspective, modeling how delayed long-term care access increases short-term care usage. Notably, over 50% of nursing home clients are admitted via STC, highlighting the interdependence of care settings. In this talk, we demonstrate how optimized LTC allocation strategies
Keywords
- Access and waiting list
- Modelling and simulation
- Home care and Long Term Care
Status: accepted
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