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A fundamental issue confronting health care providers, payers and policy makers relates to the ability to empirically determine whether health care capacity is sufficient and being optimally utilized to serve a given demand for services. Providers often clamor for more resources without knowing where those resources are needed. Payers have difficulty pinpointing where resources are being poorly utilized. Both sides are unable to make a convincing case. Moreover, discussion about what additional capacity may be needed in the event of a catastrophe, flu epidemic or even a neighboring hospital closure, is hampered by the inability to accurately determine whether existing capacity is sufficient or optimally utilized to meet current demand. It’s difficult to know how far to go if you don’t know where you are. Research conducted by the MVP is directed at enabling hospitals and health care systems to determine the adequacy of current capacity in meeting demand and to better predict what additional capacity may be needed under varying demand scenarios (e.g. hospital closure, bioterrorism attack, flu epidemic). Through work carried out at Cambridge Health Alliance, MVP faculty have been are able to determine establish exactly what additional demand that Hospital could accommodate by optimally after reconfiguring capacity to address patient flow. To our knowledge, that hospital is alone in being able to accurately determine the point at which additional resources would be needed to address expanded demand. This type of analysis and modeling can be carried out at the hospital or system level. |
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