College 2 Conceptual Ideas and forecasting new patients

General comments on first part

- Not always concise and to-the-point
- Write in an interesting way
- Rating scale yes/no gives limited info
- Sometimes just one other thesis
- Sometimes just the three in-class criteria
- Think of lay-out of your essay
- Mention author name and number of thesis
- You could look at length/audience and other stuff
- Title page etc.
See example from canvas
Conceptual models
Conceptual models are difficult because it mostly unknown, there is no unique conceptual
idea about health care.

Typical characteristics of conceptual models:

- The plan gives a good representation of the primary process
- The plan gives a good description of which decisions have to be taken (without going
into detail, or mathematical descriptions)
- The plan gives a good description of WHEN decisions have to be taken, preferably
including the required information
- There is often some hierarchy in the plan.
Basically, you start with empty roster for all resources and gradually fill them, first with
specialism, later with specialists and again later with patients and supporting staff

The service blueprint could be useful however it is not easy to read due to the colors and the
arrows and the lanes. This all makes it quite messy.
On the otherhand maybe in the such a big process it can be handy.
Furthermore,
If you want to describe the current process you would do it at the beginning. Before doing
the research it could be useful so you understand the whole process.
It seems messy
For logistics it is not necessary such figure

Read 23
Not easy to ready, it shows the clinical pathway over the patient. It is a lot of information, I do
not know when you would use it or who would use it.
The grey ones are the different departs, the arrows are how the information flows.
It depends on what you are going to predict, if the whole process is important to you than it
can be useful. And if you have probabilities of going somewhere and

Read 16 ….
You can read it yourself if you choose to do this subject

 Read 27 – Joost Menting, page 21-23, Conceptual model Chapter

It feels weird that in the first Alinea of 5.1 the writer already tells us the conclusion (the
problem is not likely to be solvable by a single optimisation model, queuing model or
heuristic) about the articles and that in the next Alinea he starts to tell us more about the
content of the article.
The writer uses both past tense and present tense.
Clear conclusion in the end of Alinea 2, however some parts are a bit vague before
Alinea 3 is clear.
5.2 is very clear. The writer really substantiates (onderbouwen) why he chooses for this type
of conceptual model.
The argumentation why he chooses for the type of tactical model is clear. However I think
that the examples are unnecessary, and make it even more unclear.
5.2.2 it clear in a way why he chooses for excel VBA.
5.2.3 The last conclusion is a bit unnecessary
In the conceptual model it is not clear that the update input parameters are checked after
one week
A lot of writing mistakes, using off instead of of for example, forgetting kommas. Using 1
instead of writing the whole word. Using hoofdletters when not necessary.

All in all, clear explanation however due to bad English writing it is a bit less clear
sometimes.

 Read 26 – Lizanne Pieter, page 14-15, Section 4.1

The matrix organization is explained clearly.c Everything is quite clear. Sometimes an Alinea
could be ended with a conclusion and more motivation could be added to some final
discissions. For example, the part of the DRGs is very clear but adding a last sentence:
therefore the DRGs are used as …
The English writing is good compared to the previous one.
  Read 17 – Eveline Blikslager, page 24, Section 4.1
The first Alinea is quite clear, However I am missing a conceptual model as figure, a figure
can help to understand the text better
Good English writing

Topic 2: Forecasting new patients

We distinguish the forecasting of new patients with the forecasting of patients that are
already somewhere in the system (= having some appointments). For the new patients the
forecasting is a process based upon historical data, whereas for existing patients, it is about
actual numbers and transitions. In some theses, both elements appear.

Read 25 – Tim Kragten, page 14-15, Section 4.3

The maximum number of beds during the day is the dependent variable and thus the
forecasted variable, bed occupancy. De table is maximum number of bed occupied during
the day

It is based upon different dummy variables which are related to seasonal factors,
holidays, off-days, a trend in years, and the day of the week. The tested periods are
displayed in table 5 below. The number of OR sessions are added as an independent
variable.
The data is influenced by the elective patients which are already planned. This does not
mean that there is no demand but it is also based on the resources.
We are measuring accepted patients and not the real patient demands. So the real
demand might be different.
It is also possible that because of the number of outgoing patients is reduced that the
number of scheduled operations are reduced due to this as well.
Read Marle muselaers, page 16-17, Section 4.3
- What will she forecast?
She forecasts the number of realized nursing hours.
It is very confusion what she is going to calculate, and what she uses it for and where the
independent variable come in because they are not used in the formula
She uses the number of nursing hours probably to calculate the bed? It is better than the
number of patients I quess

- Based upon which data?

You can use a clustering method to cluster variables. If you group it you make the model
stronger. The model becomes smaller.
𝑁𝐸=𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒
𝐼𝐸=𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑓𝑡
NS =𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑛𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒
𝐼𝑆=𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑓𝑡
- Do you see similar problems as in the previous thesis?
She looked at the changes of ward, she took the probability into account of changing to
another ward. As she took into nursing hours this is important because it may different
She uses fiction discharge dates and the other model did not use that. Normally when you
enter the hospital, you bed care is not high, however the day afterwards (operation) it is way
higher and then it decreases every day.
She looks at the presents of the
This is more useful for short term notice.
Tim does not worry about what is done on a day (holidayplanning)
Consider and compare for both theses:
- The objective function of the forecast method
- The clustering method
- The results of the clustering method

She used partitional clustering whereby first an initial number of clusters is determined by
reallocating iteratively the objects among the clusters. This method is preferred for pattern
recognition

Read 1 Bregje van der Staak page 23-26

- How are the parameters optimized in this thesis?

- How are the parameters optimized in thesis 25 and thesis 30?

- Are these choices well motivated?

Tim Kragten Marle Bregje van Windi Kim Rietjens

Muselaers der Staak Winasti
Years of
historical
data
Parameter
Motivation
for
parameter
optimization
 Clustering
method

When predicting new patients, different decisions need to be made, for example what is the
actual variable that is forecasted and how is it related to the forecast of new patients, based
upon what historical data is the variable forecasted and what other decisions influence this
data and in what way?