Locational efficiency of Chicago hospitals: an experimental model.

An experimental simulation model is described by which imbalances in the distribution of hospitals may be evaluated and location shifts suggested to meet future needs. The model, partly deterministic and partly probabilistic, is here used to project the effects on patient travel of shifting capacity and of shifting demand. Applied to the metropolitan Chicago hospital system, the model results indicate that relocation of hospital beds would considerably decrease patient travel, but that the same improvement in patient travel and in hospital utilization could be achieved, with a far less radical and costly shift of beds, by relaxing existing constraints of income and race.