Spatial scales of COVID-19 transmission in Mexico.

During outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, internationally connected cities often experience large and early outbreaks, while rural regions follow after some delay. This hierarchical structure of disease spread is influenced primarily by the multiscale structure of human mobility. However, during the COVID-19 epidemic, public health responses typically did not take into consideration the explicit spatial structure of human mobility when designing nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs).

Evaluation and implementation of a Just-In-Time bed-assignment strategy to reduce wait times for surgical inpatients.

Early bed assignments of elective surgical patients can be a useful planning tool for hospital staff; they provide certainty in patient placement and allow nursing staff to prepare for patients' arrivals to the unit. However, given the variability in the surgical schedule, they can also result in timing mismatches-beds remain empty while their assigned patients are still in surgery, while other ready-to-move patients are waiting for their beds to become available. In this study, we used data from four surgical units in a large academic medical center to build a discrete-event simulation with which we show how a Just-In-Time (JIT) bed assignment, in which ready-to-move patients are assigned to ready-beds, would decrease bed idle time and increase access to general care beds for all surgical patients.

Forecasting hospital-level COVID-19 admissions using real-time mobility data.

Background: For each of the COVID-19 pandemic waves, hospitals have had to plan for deploying surge capacity and resources to manage large but transient increases in COVID-19 admissions. While a lot of effort has gone into predicting regional trends in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, there are far fewer successful tools for creating accurate hospital-level forecasts.

Methods: Large-scale, anonymized mobile phone data has been shown to correlate with regional case counts during the first two waves of the pandemic (spring 2020, and fall/winter 2021).

Low-Volume Bowel Preparation Is Associated With Reduced Time to Colonoscopy in Hospitalized Patients: A Propensity-Matched Analysis.

Introduction: Delays in inpatient colonoscopy are commonly caused by inadequate bowel preparation and result in increased hospital length of stay (LOS) and healthcare costs. Low-volume bowel preparation (LV-BP; sodium sulfate, potassium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate ) has been shown to improve outpatient bowel preparation quality compared with standard high-volume bowel preparations (HV-BP; polyethylene glycol ). However, its efficacy in hospitalized patients has not been well-studied.

Systematic OR Block Allocation at a Large Academic Medical Center: Comprehensive Review on a Data-driven Surgical Scheduling Strategy.

Objective: To alleviate the surgical patient flow congestion in the perioperative environment without additional resources.

Background: Massachusetts General Hospital experienced increasing overcrowding of the perioperative environment in 2008. The Post-Anesthesia Care Unit would often be at capacity, forcing patients to wait in the operating room.

Pooled Open Blocks Shorten Wait Times for Nonelective Surgical Cases.

Objective: Assess the impact of the implementation of a data-driven scheduling strategy that aimed to improve the access to care of nonelective surgical patients at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Background: Between July 2009 and June 2010, MGH experienced increasing throughput challenges in its perioperative environment: approximately 30% of the nonelective patients were waiting more than the prescribed amount of time to get to surgery, hampering access to care and aggravating the lack of inpatient beds.

Methods: This work describes the design and implementation of an "open block" strategy: operating room (OR) blocks were reserved for nonelective patients during regular working hours (prime time) and their management centralized.