In many developed countries the problem of allocating resources within the Health Care System is perennial. Health Care planners wish to know the consequences of changing the mix of resources. The Balance of Care (BOC) Model, designed to help Health Care Planners answer this question, has been successfully applied over the past few years in the Department of Health and Social Security, UK. The Disaggregated Resource Allocation Model (DRAM), developed at IIASA, is also designed to help Health Care planners answer the above question.
This paper compares the performance of both models in two respects. Firstly, it indicates that DRAM is likely to be able to cope with problems of the same size and complexity as the BOC model. Secondly, the paper demonstrates that DRAM can more accurately model the use of alternative modes of care within treatment categories. Data collected for the allocation of care for the elderly in Devon, UK are used in the comparisons
