Healthcare Data Analytics: Methods of Matching Scarce Resources with uncertain Patient Demand: Optimized Budgeted Nursing Staffing with Random Patient Demand - Webinar (Recorded)

The objective of this webinar is to provide an overview and examples of the application of the data analytics methodology called the ‘newsvendor’ framework. This methodology helps to determine the optimal staffing solutions for the specified time periods for hospital units with randomly fluctuating daily patient census.

The 'newsvendor' model is widely used for problems in which the optimal inventory level should be determined for a specified time period with an uncertain (random) demand. However, the use of the 'newsvendor' framework was rather limited in healthcare management. At the same time, this is a fruitful area of application of the 'newsvendor' framework.

Why you should Attend:

Given the dynamic nature of the healthcare supply and demand, the variation and the uncertainty create two types of problems:

• Over-staffing, which hurts operation margins
• Under-staffing, which requires overtime and/or premium pay that also hurts margins and causes a lower quality of care
• The latter problem adversely affects patient and staff satisfaction

Nursing managers typically estimate staffing needs and the staffing budget based on the past historical average number of patients (usually midnight census).

Because of the inevitable variability of the patient census (uncertainty), the resulting staffing is usually:

• either not enough to deliver a proper quality of care or
• excessive, and results in some idle time and/or pay under contractual obligation for nothing to do

Reference: Kolker, A., The Optimal Workforce Staffing Solutions With Random Patient Demand in Healthcare Settings. In Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 4-th Ed, IGI-Global, chapter 322, pp. 3711-3724, 2017.

Areas Covered in the Session:

• Main Concept and Some definitions
• The `newsvendor` framework approach
• Optimized annual staffing level
• Optimized monthly staffing level
• Optimized staffing for caregivers skills mix
• Comparison of the 3 methodology frameworks for modeling staffing with variable patient demand