EURO 2024 Copenhagen
Abstract Submission

1026. The Hybrid Hospital: Balancing On-Site and Remote Hospitalization

Invited abstract in session MB-20: Just and ethical sustainability transitions, stream OR and Ethics.

Monday, 10:30-12:00
Room: 45 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Noa Zychlinski
Data and Decision Sciences, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
2. Gal Mendelson
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
3. Andrew Daw
University of Southern California

Abstract

We study the dynamics of hybrid hospitals offering on-site and remote hospitalization through telemedicine. These new healthcare models require efficient operational policies to balance costs, efficiency, and patient well-being. Our study addresses two primary operational questions: (i) how to direct patient admission and call-in policies based on individual characteristics and proximity and (ii) how to determine the optimal allocation of medical resources between these two hospitalization options.
We develop a model that uses Brownian Motions to capture the patient’s health evolution during remote/on-site hospitalization. By optimizing call-in policies, we find that remote hospitalization is cost-effective only for moderately distant patients, where the call-in threshold has a non-monotonic relationship with travel time. The impact of scarce resources is reflected through simultaneous increase of both remote and on-site costs by the same value, without altering the solution structure under abundant resources.
Contrary to the widely held view that telemedicine can mitigate rural and
non-rural healthcare disparities, our research suggests that on-site care may actually be more cost-effective than remote hospitalization for patients in distant locations, due to increased risks for remote patients who
are called in to the hospital. This may be of particular concern in light of the growing number of “hospital deserts” amid recent rural hospital closures.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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