Strategic capacity planning within the Erasmus MC

Summary This thesis contains research within the area of strategic capacity planning in a hospital. The main approach is to analyze historic developments regarding patient demand and capacity consumption of Health Care resources and to draw the link with a planning of the resources in the future. The study is meant to contain a scientific as well as practical perspective as the research took place on behalf of the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It is important to notice that the Dutch Health Care system has undergone a transition in the last years. The consciousness of capacity planning has risen after the DBC (Diagnostic Treatment Groups) system has been introduced in the Netherlands in the year 2005. This had the effect that the Dutch Health Care system developed from a supply-focused to a demand driven system. Therefore, in our approach we focused on patient demand as the main factor of impact on capacity consumption. By analyzing historic information on patient demand, we could confirm general trends in the Netherlands as an increasing number of hospital admissions and a decreasing average duration of stay. Based on the data we constructed scenarios that forecast future demand. Our methodology represents a mathematical model that models linear relationships between the patient-related input parameters and the resource-related output parameters. As resources we selected beds, operation time and clinical workforce capacity. We also analyzed the possible impact of an internal reorganization (Theming) within the scenario analysis. Basically we found that if we follow the trend from the last years regarding the increase of the number of admissions, the future requirement of bed, operation time and workforce capacity will increase as well. This increase is expected especially in the area of GIC (digestion) and transplantation. The idea is that in the future the Erasmus MC makes increased usage of strategic capacity planning in order to overcome capacity shortages or the risk of excess.