Table 2.

Factors varied in experiments using model of randomly fluctuating demand for patient admission and available inpatient bed capacity

Experiment No	Factor varied	Range
1	Initial emergency admissions rate as a proportion of total bed capacity	5-15%
2	Long term growth rate of emergency admissions	0-6%
3	Proportion of emergency patients with zero length of stay	0-20%
4	Notional stay ascribed to emergency patients classified as zero length of stay	0-0.8 days
5	Daily discharge rate for emergency patients	10-20%
	(Equivalent length of stay)	(5-10 days)
6	Initial bed occupancy	60-100%
7	Seasonal variation in emergency admissions as a proportion of mean admission rate	0-20%
8	Standard deviation of the random variation in emergency admissions	10-50%
9	Magnitude of day of week variations in emergency admission rates (multiple of baseline values)	0.0-2.0
10	Number of beds temporarily unavailable (proportion of bed pool)	0-20%
11	Size of bed pool (with admissions scaled pro rata to bed numbers)	50-300