Support managing population aging stress of emergency departments in a computational way

Old people usually have more complex health problems and use healthcare services more frequently than young people. It is obvious that the increasing old people both in number and proportion will challenge the emergency departments (ED). This paper firstly presents a way to quantitatively predict an...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Liu, Zhengchun, Rexachs, Dolores|||0000-0001-5500-850X, Epelde, Francisco|||0000-0001-5547-4025, Luque, Emilio|||0000-0002-2884-3232
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:176079
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/176079
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.procs.2017.05.147
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Population aging
Agent-Based Model
Emergency Department
Descripción
Sumario:Old people usually have more complex health problems and use healthcare services more frequently than young people. It is obvious that the increasing old people both in number and proportion will challenge the emergency departments (ED). This paper firstly presents a way to quantitatively predict and explain this challenge by using simulation techniques. Then, we outline the capability of simulation for decision support to overcome this challenge. Specifically, we use simulation to predict and explain the impact of population aging over an ED. In which, a precise ED simulator which has been validated for a public hospital ED will be used to predict the behavior of an ED under population aging in the next 15 years. Our prediction shows that the stress of population aging to EDs can no longer be ignored and ED upgrade must be carefully planned. Based on this prediction, the cost and benefits of several upgrade proposals are evaluated.