An LP Planning Model for a Mental Health Community Support System

Abstract

In this paper we develop a resource planning and allocation model for a mental-health community-support system. The intent of the model is to provide a tool to system managers and planners to support resource planning and allocation decision-making. More and more, mental health care is being delivered by a variety of community-based service agencies instead of single, comprehensive institutions. The service needs of a client population are continually changing, and depend upon the relative functioning of the population, which depends upon the efficacy of the services provided. The availability of resources is becoming scarcer, and is more closely scrutinized. Consequently, the system manager must attempt to apply the available resources as effectively as possible. We develop a conceptual framework for planning that includes aggregating patients according to their functional level and service needs, and defining “service package options” for each aggregate patient group. We also estimate the effect of giving a particular service package to a patient group, in terms of functional improvement or regression. The planning problem is then to assign service packages to aggregate groups over a multi-period planning horizon to maximize some measure of system welfare within the available resources. This planning problem is a linear programming problem that we illustrate using representative data.