Mathematical Modeling for Healthcare Capacity Planning                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Linda V. Green (Cain Brothers & Co. Professor Emerita, Columbia Business School)

Abstract

Determining capacity needs for hospital beds, physicians, nurses and other healthcare resources is critical in providing timely care for patients as has been clearly illustrated over this past year of the COVID pandemic. It is also very complex and often controversial and there are often conflicting perspectives among healthcare professionals, policy makers and the public. In this talk, I’ll describe some specific capacity issues I’ve investigated using queueing and simulation models and how these and other similar models can be used to provide important insights for both short-term and long-term healthcare planning.