Keywords

Hospitals -- Accounting, Hospitals -- Business management -- Mathematical models

Abstract

An adequate health care resource allocation in a hospital is directly dependent upon the ability to estimate the hospital's patient census accurately. Efforts to estimate hospital's patient census are classified into two general methods: estimating from historical data, and demographic analysis. This paper takes the position that the estimate from the historical data is more economic and convenient for understanding than the estimate from the demographic analysis. Seven models that predict hospital's patient census by using the hospital's historical data are evaluated to fit the characteristics of each pattern shown in historical information. Where a microcomputer is available, this forecasting system provides detailed prediction of patient census with the comparable percentage of forecasting error among each model. Data from a ten-unit hospital in Florida is analyzed and provides a predicted patient census for the hospital's short-term plan. Results of this patient census estimating system and its advantage over the other forecasting method are discussed.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu

Graduation Date

Summer 1982

Advisor

Sepulveda, Jose A.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering

Format

PDF

Pages

66 p.

Language

English

Rights

Public Domain

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0013714

Accessibility Status

Searchable text

Download

Included in

Engineering Commons

Share

COinS