TY - JOUR
T1 - Fitting aggregated phase-type distributions to the length-of-stay in intra-hospital patient transfers
AU - Gu, Wanlu
AU - Fan, Neng
AU - Liao, Haitao
N1 - Funding Information:
We would appreciate the University of Arizona Center for Biomedical Informatics & Biostatistics Department of Biomedical Informatics Services for providing the data. This material is based upon work supported by National Science Foundation, USA Grants #1634282 , #1635379 and #1740858 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - The patient transfer, as a common seen and necessary healthcare procedure, plays an important role in maintaining efficient treatment and improving the quality of healthcare. Among various factors impacting and indicating the safety and efficiency of the patient transfer, the length-of-stay (LOS), which is not often studied in this field, is worth investigating. Phase-type (PH) distributions, as one of the popular methods of modeling LOS, will be integrated in an aggregated Markov chain to construct a model to describe the sequences of LOS in hospital units. In this paper, we model the intra-hospital transfer flow routes by fitting aggregated PH distribution and using Maximum Likelihood Estimation to estimate the parameters. Following the results of distribution fitting, the patients can be divided into different groups according to their LOS in the same unit. By analyzing each group to find out its common characteristics, intra-hospital transfer routes, admission and discharge situations, the associations among significant factors, the LOS and the treatment efficiency are evaluated.
AB - The patient transfer, as a common seen and necessary healthcare procedure, plays an important role in maintaining efficient treatment and improving the quality of healthcare. Among various factors impacting and indicating the safety and efficiency of the patient transfer, the length-of-stay (LOS), which is not often studied in this field, is worth investigating. Phase-type (PH) distributions, as one of the popular methods of modeling LOS, will be integrated in an aggregated Markov chain to construct a model to describe the sequences of LOS in hospital units. In this paper, we model the intra-hospital transfer flow routes by fitting aggregated PH distribution and using Maximum Likelihood Estimation to estimate the parameters. Following the results of distribution fitting, the patients can be divided into different groups according to their LOS in the same unit. By analyzing each group to find out its common characteristics, intra-hospital transfer routes, admission and discharge situations, the associations among significant factors, the LOS and the treatment efficiency are evaluated.
KW - Intra-hospital transfer
KW - Length-of-stay
KW - Markov chain
KW - Phase-type distribution
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U2 - 10.1016/j.orhc.2021.100291
DO - 10.1016/j.orhc.2021.100291
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102110080
VL - 29
JO - Operations Research for Health Care
JF - Operations Research for Health Care
SN - 2211-6923
M1 - 100291
ER -