An iterative Newton-Raphson (NR) method on Lee-Carter parameter’s estimation for predicting hospital admission rates

Abstract

The government hospital in Malaysia is prominent for its low cost of healthcare and medical treatment. Due to the increasing healthcare expenditure, it had been reported that the hospital admission is increasing annually. This has led to the widespread problem of overcrowding. In order to assist the government in planning and managing demands for health services and healthcare needs, the prediction for future bed admission into a hospital is done using Lee Carter model with improved estimated parameters. In particular, the estimation approach used to generate the parameters of the Lee-Carter model is an iterative Newton-Raphson Method (NR). In this study, the admission rate of Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II (HRPZ II) Kota Bharu is analysed and forecasted spanning the period of historical data from 2001 until 2011 for estimation. It is found that the occurrence of admission to HRPZ II Kota Bharu for both genders in each of the all broad age groups will slowly decrease over time.