Title
A data-driven approach to manage the length of stay for appendectomy patients
Abstract
Skyrocketing patient-care costs demand that health-care institutions improve their resource-utilization effectiveness and efficiency. The length of an inpatient's stay has direct significant impacts on patient-care costs, service quality, and outcomes. Despite attempts to manage the length of stay (LOS) for frequently performed surgical procedures (e.g., appendectomies), many service providers cannot achieve the target range allowed by the managed care system. We take a data-driven approach to predict which appendectomy patients will likely have a LOS beyond that reimbursable by the underlying managed care system. We use a support vector machine to construct a generic prediction system and then extend that system by incorporating a resampling or cost-sensitive method to address the imbalanced sample problem. Using 557 appendectomy cases from a tertiary medical center in Taiwan, we examine the effectiveness of the generic prediction system compared with the effectiveness of its extensions. The results suggest the viability of a data-driven approach to manage LOS by enabling service providers to identify in advance those patients who will likely need extended stays. The comparative analyses also show the relative advantages of the oversampling and cost-sensitive methods for addressing the imbalanced sample problem. The findings have important implications for research and practice.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1109/TSMCA.2009.2025510
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A
Keywords
Field
DocType
imbalanced sample problem,cost-sensitive method,managed care system,service quality,enabling service provider,service provider,data-driven approach,underlying managed care system,resource-utilization effectiveness,generic prediction system,appendectomy patient,health care,support vector machines,clinical decision support system,supervised learning,resource allocation,technology management,support vector machine,quality management,resource utilization,resource management,surgery,clinical decision support systems
Data mining,Computer science,Artificial intelligence,Clinical decision support system,Operations management,Health care,Managed care,Service quality,Service provider,Technology management,Cost reduction,Machine learning,Quality management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
39
6
1083-4427
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.40
20
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tsang-Hsiang Cheng114112.02
Paul Jen-hwa Hu22046112.56