The blocking analysis and application of patients in multistage health care system.

Continuity of care has become an important indicator of the quality of healthcare gradually, however, patients are frequently blocked at the present stage in reality due to insufficient capacity at the next stage. Existing papers on such blocking problem assume that patients just wait in the blocking period, while filed survey in hospital prove that patients accept the service of next stage when they are blocked, and the corresponding service time between neighboring stages is related. Under the consideration of continuity of care, a queuing model and a more effective heuristic on estimating blocking probability are designed. Compared with simulation results and previous approaches, new heuristic is more accurate and stable. In addition, expanded applications of the new heuristic prove it's effectiveness in health care performance evaluation and resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]