Dimensionamento di strutture sanitarie su scala provinciale: esempi di simulazione

Background National Health Service has always played a key role in the economic growth of a Country. For this reason it undergoes a continuous change trying to find a balance between available resources and appropriateness of care. Objective The aim of this work was to develop a quantitative model which simulates the intra-regional health mobility in order to obtain an overall improvement in the quality of the service offered. Methods For this study we used two quantitative tools derived from spatial geography and operational research, which represent patient flow within a geographical area by studying the interactions between demand and supply of health services. Results The model allowed us to conduct several simulations in order to test the response of the local health system in the following cases: analysis of workload interactions between supply and demand with a fixed allocation of resources and assuming an increase in demand of 20–30%; planning availability of beds, in order to find a minimum solution for ICU and CCU; find the optimal number of hospital beds, to improve accessibility to Obstetrics and Gynaecology department with a stable supply of care. Conclusions Though evaluation of intra-regional health mobility is quite complicated, use of quantitative methods, like gravity models and location-allocation models, gives to policy makers a set of useful information to define regional health policy.