Suboptimal control of a population diffusion model with application to a hospital inpatient admission system

An open loop feedback control strategy is developed for the control of a semi-markov population. Census forecasts of the population are derived. Assuming the existence of a cost associated to the census, an optimal control problem is formulated. A suboptimal control is obtained by solving at each period a mathematical programming problem. Evaluation of the proposed strategy is made for use as hospital admission system.