Modeling Health Care Systems: Linking Operations and Health Services Research

An Exploratory Workshop funded by a grant from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia awarded to Principal Investigators Drs. Boris Sobolev and Adrian Levy, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology.

Now more than ever before, the Canadian health system is under intense pressure for improvement. There is an increasing need for new approaches to planning health care delivery. One innovation is the use of computer simulation to model patient flow through the health system in order to assess the impact of policy and organizational changes before they are implemented. Investigator-driven initiatives to develop computer simulations are being undertaken by operations researchers, computer scientists, health services researchers and health managers. However, there is a lack of genuine interdisciplinary efforts to develop, validate and translate these simulations into current practice of health care management.

This workshop was a gathering of Canadian and international experts in operations and health services research and computer sciences to address two major issues: 1) What are the current operations research methods to modeling patient flow? 2) What are the current health services research questions that require simulations modeling?

The 3-day workshop consisted of presentations by leaders in the field, large group discussion, and small group break out sessions. September 1 focused on the problem of evaluation in health services delivery. The morning of September 2 was a session open to health care managers and policy makers who heard key opinion leaders relate their own experiences with simulation. The afternoon of September 2 focused on recent developments in patient flow modeling. September 3 was scheduled as free time and social activities to allow participants to explore the UBC campus, Vancouver and its environs. The closing session on September 4 was devoted to developing a plan for future collaborations and a strategy for knowledge translation.