Modelling urgent events

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A major policy concern for the NHS is how to deal with the increase in emergency hospital admissions widely observed in the 1990s. This paper presents a systems approach to understanding the way in which unpredictable events are dealt with by health care services. It does this by developing a model of urgent events and simulating the workings of an actual system of care. The paper is in three parts: the first outlines the issues addressed, setting these in the context of the crisis in NHS emergency provision from which the impetus for this work arose; the second provides a general discussion of models of perceived need and response which lie at the heart of the simulation; the final section of the paper moves on from this general discussion to the simulation model itself, providing a description of the simulation objects.

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