PubMed · 16224875
The source did not provide an abstract. Follow the original record for more information.
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Kathleen DeVries. 2005. Make your choice.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16224875/
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.
KEEP EXPLORING
Long waiting times for inpatient treatment in the UK National Health Service have been a source of popular and political concern, and therefore a target for policy initiatives. In the London Patient Choice Project, patients at risk of breaching inpatient waiting time targets were offered the choice of an alternative hospital with a guaranteed shorter wait. This paper develops a simple theoretical model of the effect of greater patient choice on waiting times. It then uses a difference in difference econometric methodology to estimate the impact of the London choice project on ophthalmology waiting times. In line with the model predictions, the project led to shorter average waiting times in the London region and a convergence in waiting times amongst London hospitals.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A "Winner-take-all" network is a computational mechanism for picking an alternative with the largest excitatory input. This choice is far from optimal when there is uncertainty in the strength of the inputs, and when information is available about how alternatives may be related. For some time, the Social Choice community has recognized that many other procedures will yield more robust winners. The Borda Count and the pair-wise Condorcet tally are among the most favored. If biological systems strive to optimize information aggregation, then it is of interest to examine the complexity of networks that implement these procedures. We offer two biologically feasible implementations that are relatively simple modifications of classical recurrent networks.