Patient allocations in general practice in case of patients' preferences for gender of doctor and their unavailability

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In some countries every citizen has the right to obtain a designated general practitioner. However, each individual may have preferences that cannot be fulfilled due to shortages of some kind. The questions raised in this paper are: To what extent can we expect that preferences are fulfilled when the patients "compete" for entry on the lists of practitioners? What changes can we expect under changing conditions? A particular issue explored in the paper is when the majority of women prefer a female doctor and there is a shortage of female doctors.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>The analysis is done on the macro level by the so called gravity model and on the micro level by recent theories of benefit efficient population behaviour, partly developed by two of the authors. A major finding is that the number of patients wanting a doctor of the underrepresented gender is less important than the strength of their preferences as determining factor for the benefit efficient allocation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We were able to generate valuable insights to the questions asked and to the dynamics of benefit efficient allocations. The approach is quite general and can be applied in a variety of contexts.</p

Spring-Block Model Reveals Region-Like Structures

A mechanical spring-block model is used for realizing an objective space partition of settlements from a geographic territory in region-like structures. The method is based on the relaxation-dynamics of the spring-block system and reveals in a hierarchical manner region-like entities at different spatial scales. It takes into account in an elegant manner both the spatiality of the elements and the connectivity relations among them. Spatiality is taken into account by using the geographic coordinates of the settlements, and by detecting the neighbors with the help of a Delaunay triangulation. Connectivity between neighboring settlements are quantified using a Pearson-like correlation for the relative variation of a relevant socio-economic parameter (population size, GDP, tax payed per inhabitant, etc.). The method is implemented in an interactive JAVA application and it is applied with success for an artificially generated society and for the case of USA, Hungary and Transylvania

Gravitational perspectives in garbage dump siting

R00, R10,