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

Utilizing MATPOWER in Optimal Power Flow

This paper shows how MATPOWER, a MATLAB Power System Simulation Package can be used for optimal power flow (OPF) simulations. MATPOWER is a package of MATLAB files for solving power flow and optimal power flow problems. It is a simulation tool for researchers and educators which is easy to use and modify. An OPF simulation gives the active/reactive power generated and purchased at each bus and the nodal prices. The nodal prices are of special interest because they reflect the marginal generation and load at each bus (node). These prices are also called locational prices and are found to be the optimal prices, maximizing social welfare and taking transmission constraints into account. They can provide the right incentives to market players and to society. When transmission congestion is present this creates market inefficiency, since cheap distant generation may be replaced with more expensive local generation. We are especially interested in OPF as utilized by a centralized dispatcher, and we also describe the features relevant for the Norwegian and Nordic markets. We optimize three cases and analyze the economic consequences of different network topologies and transmission congestion