Social networks enabled coordination model for cost management of patient hospital admissions

In this study, we introduce a social networks enabled coordination model for exploring the effect of network position of "patient," "physician," and "hospital" actors in a patient-centered care network that evolves during patient hospitalization period on the total cost of coordination. An actor is a node, which represents an entity such as individual and organization in a social network. In our analysis of actor networks and coordination in the healthcare literature, we identified that there is significant gap where a number of promising hospital coordination model have been developed (e.g., Guided Care Model, Chronic Care Model) for the current healthcare system focusing on quality of service and patient satisfaction. The health insurance dataset for total hip replacement (THR) from hospital contribution fund, a prominent Australian Health Insurance Company, are analyzed to examine our proposed coordination model. We consider network attributes of degree, connectedness, in-degree, out-degree, and tie strength to measure network position of actors. To measure the cost of coordination for a particular hospital, average of total hospitalization expenses for all THR hospital admissions is used. Results show that network positions of "patient," "physician," and "hospital" actors considering all hospital admissions that a particular hospital has have effect on the average of total hospitalization expenses of that hospital. These results can be used as guidelines to set up a cost-effective healthcare practice structure for patient hospitalization expenses.