Modeling Hospital Resource Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experimental Validation

Abstract

One of the main challenges posed by the healthcare crisis generated by COVID-19 is to avoid hospital collapse. The occupation of hospital beds by patients diagnosed by COVID-19 implies the diversion or suspension of their use for other specialities. Therefore, it is useful to have information that allows efficient management of future hospital occupancy. This article presents a robust and simple model to show certain characteristics of the evolution of the dynamic process of bed occupancy by patients with COVID-19 in a hospital by means of an adaptation of Kaplan-Meier survival curves. To check this model, the evolution of the COVID-19 hospitalization process of two hospitals between 11 March and 15 June 2020 is analyzed. The information provided by the KaplanMeier curves allows forecasts of hospital occupancy in subsequent periods. The results shows an average deviation of 2.45 patients between predictions and actual occupancy in the period analyzed.