Analisys of hospital bed capacity via queuing theory and simulation

Eighty percent of Brazilian population is assisted by the public health system (SUS), while the rest uses private health insurance. The existing number of beds do not meet the entire demand and Brazilian government has made efforts to improve the system. The Health Ministry has analyzed a new proposal for planning the bed capacity. This proposal uses a queuing model and a new categorization of hospitalization and beds, taking into account specialties, age of the patients, and appropriate occupancy rates. In this paper, we use the proposed technique to estimate the required beds for Belo Horizonte, a mid-sized city in Brazil. We compare number of beds required by centralized and non-centralized administration. A simulation model was developed to analyze the dynamic behavior of the system and searching for the best configuration. This model was used to evaluate the results obtained by queuing model and to check its usability.