Health Sector Modelling
Designing Models of Care
As the health sector continues to grapple with increasing demands and constrained finances, designing new models of care is seen as one way of making the health dollar go further, and reach those who currently may not be receiving the levels of care they need. Often, however, these ‘models of care’ are simple narrative descriptions or flow charts that provide little insight into how it would actually work. What are its key capacity constraints, what are the key decision rules that affect how it works, how well would it work under a range of patient volumes, what are the resource requirements?
Dynamic Simulation Modelling allows you to build a ‘virtual model of care’ in which you can test how it would operate, before investing large amounts of money in a new way of working that may not deliver what is required. Yacht designers, engineers, pilots, and others dealing with complex systems, build models, as experimental worlds, before building, or flying, the real thing.
The model becomes the focus of experimentation and testing; a tool that is used to structure the conversation and support the search for innovative solutions. Using models to test thinking before investing in the real thing can save millions of dollars, and improve the quality of thinking needed to develop innovative and effective models of care.