The demographic ageing is causing an increasing patient population, while there is a shortage of care professionals. Therefore, many hospitals set up virtual care centers to remotely support and monitor patients in their own environment, such that quality of care and patient experience increases, and hospital capacity is freed to take care of complex and/or critical patients. Through remote monitoring, a shift is made from static in-hospital care pathways to dynamic mixed-location care provision. This increased care demand uncertainty in combination with geographical/virtual spread, requires new integral capacity decision-making strategies. This project therefore focusses on how capacity decisions can support efficient operations in these virtual care centers and analyzes the impact of this care transition on the capacity management of care professionals in hospitals, virtual care centers, and home healthcare.
As a case study, we consider the virtual care center of Isala hospital (Zwolle, The Netherlands), and where possible pilots are extended to the other 6 MProve hospitals.