Speaker: David Stanford, Statistical & Actuarial Sciences, UWO
Title: A New Paradigm for Priority Patient Selection
Abstract: The central purpose of this work is to bridge the gap between two aspects of health care systems:
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for delay in access to care for patient classes, with differing levels of acuity or urgency, specify the fraction of patients needing to be seen by some key time point.
- Patient classes present themselves for care, and consume health care resources, in a fashion that is totally independent of the KPIs. Rather, they present in a manner determined by the prevalence of the medical condition, at a rate that may vary over time. Treatment times will likewise be determined by medical need and current practice.
There is no reason to expect the resulting system performance will adhere to the specified KPIs. The present work presents a new paradigm for priority assignment that enables one to fine-tune the system in order to achieve the delay targets, assuming sufficient capacity exists for at least one such arrangement.
This work is based on collaboration with Peter Taylor (Melbourne) and Ilze Ziedins (Auckland).