ADVANCED STOCHASTIC EQUILIBRIUM PROGRAMMING IN THE UK NATIONAL-HEALTH-SERVICE MARKET

Following the 1989 NHS White Paper and the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, an internal market for healthcare services was established by br inging about the separation of purchasers from providers of secondary healthcare services. The motivation for these reforms was the fact tha t in certain healthcare service sectors excess capacity existed over p atient demand, whilst in others patient demands far exceeded the capac ity to process patient needs. The market thus aims to stimulate, throu gh competition, a more efficient allocation of limited resources so as to target resourcing according to local, as opposed to national needs . In this paper we address the problems of dynamically allocating reso urces within the newly restructured NHS, through the use of recent adv ances made in the mathematical treatment of uncertain imperfect oligop olistic supplier/purchaser market structures.