title: Using Coxian phase-type distributions to identify patient characteristics for duration of stay in hospital.
abstract: Coxian phase-type distributions are a special type of Markov model that describes duration until an event occurs in terms of a process consisting of a sequence of latent phases. This paper considers the use of Coxian phase-type distributions for modelling patient duration of stay for the elderly in hospital and investigates the potential for using the resulting distribution as a classifying variable to identify common characteristics between different groups of patients according to their (anticipated) length of stay in hospital. The identification of common characteristics for patient length of stay groups would offer hospital managers and clinicians possible insights into the overall management and bed allocation of the hospital wards.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, David Bates Building, Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN, UK. a.h.marshall@qub.ac.uk
authors.forename: Adele H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: Sally I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: McClean
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001509:Bed Occupancy; D005851:Geriatric Nursing; D006739:Hospital Administration; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000145:classification*; D007902:Length of Stay; D008131:London; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D016019:Survival Analysis
references.citation: Health Serv Manage Res. 1996 Feb;9(1):61-7
references.pmid: 10157224
references.citation: Health Care Manag Sci. 2002 Nov;5(4):313-9
references.pmid: 12437281