Modeling Fluctuations in a Hospital's Census

dc.contributor.advisorHarrison, Gary Wen_US
dc.contributor.authorSmith, John Darbyen_US
dc.contributor.sponsorMathematicsen_US
dc.date.accepted01/01/2012en_US
dc.date.accessioned2016-10-18T16:14:25Z
dc.date.available2016-10-18T16:14:25Z
dc.date.completed2012en_US
dc.date.issued2013-03-08
dc.descriptionThesis (M.S.) College of Charleston, South Carolina-The Graduate School, 2012en_US
dc.descriptionCommittee members: Gary W Harrison, Ben Cox, Jason Howelen_US
dc.descriptioncensus fluctuations, elapsed stay, stochastic simulation, variabilityen_US
dc.description.abstractReducing variability in a hospital's census improves the efficiency of the hospital and reduces the overall operating cost. A deterministic and stochastic four stage model is created for the purpose of modeling the hospital census and its variability. Stochastic admissions are handled as a mixed Poisson process with admission rates which depend on day of the week. The stochastic discharge process is accomplished through use of a trinomial random variable. The results are used to determine whether the most variability comes from surgical or medical admissions or surgical or medical elapsed stay. It is found through calculation of correlation that surgical admissions make a strong contribution to the variability of the overall census. The partial correlation coefficients are calculated to reveal that medical average elapsed stay explains a good portion of the census not explained by medical admissions, surgical admissions, and surgical elapsed stay. Through experimentation with the admissions process, it is determined that a reduction in the variation of surgical admissions results in a significant reduction in the variation of the census. A reduction in the variance of medical admissions experiments which reduced the medical and surgical elapsed stay also result in a reduction of the variance.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3169
dc.languageenen_US
dc.subjectMathematicsen_US
dc.subjectStatisticsen_US
dc.titleModeling Fluctuations in a Hospital's Censusen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
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