Panalysis: A New Spreadsheet-Based Tool for Pandemic Planning
March 9th, 2010
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http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2008/2008-04-03-panalysistoolpanplanning.html
Panalysis site; program can be downloaded with registration
Panalysis is a system that incorporates operations management and financial modeling techniques within the field of pandemic planning. Panalysis is more than just a model to project the possible number of casualties during a pandemic for a given population set. It is a tool for scenario planning. It provides a framework to guide the underlying planning and response process.
http://www.panalysismodel.com/about.html
Are you saying that you can adjust the tool according to changing conditions meaning that you could adjust for nurses not working for other reasons besides the two that your article mentions?
Yes. From a mechanical standpoint, it makes no difference to the model why the user has changed the inputs.
I had some thoughts about some of the other things that you mentioned such as the idea that offering child care would make it easier for nurses to come to work.
We offered that tactical example to show the importance of looking at areas in an operation where demand exceeds capacity for points where small operational changes can make potentially large differences. We also stated that "the difficulties involved in creating such a program are acknowledged but are beyond the scope of this example" For the record though, we mentioned "in-home child care" and not a traditional group after school program. For the paper, our focus was to discuss how Panalysis can be used to test mitigation and response strategies and not on the actual strategies themselves.
Thanks for your feedback,
Mark
www.panalysismodel.com
info@panalysismodel.com
I came to know your work awhile ago and I kept an eye on your Team Work.
Before I get to your Public sharing information,
Hat-Tip to Mixin,
SO, please allow me tor introduce myself, I am from differents Cultures and I have establish a modus operandi towards tolls that can help reduce morbidity and mortality in a major disase. and I stubbornly stick to this MO because it has contribute to reduce morbidity and mortality via many Nationals deciders in many populated countries.
It is obvious from what was provide to me of your work, some time ago, that there are backbone datas was accessed to you, coherent sequences of events where identified, therefore it could provide an instrument that would help of in our Mission here at FT.
Can you for those of our members that are incline to become executive agents of those kind of intrument in more than one hundred countries whose juridiction reach to our latest firgure to 3,8 billion peoples,
that is 3 800 000 000 people.
SO, I ask you, if you wish and have the time in this mobilising Time for all of us to share your premices, the standards by wich you come to your conclusions.
Again as I said, some people that I Respect, communicate to me that you where, then, (remember I have not got into this second diffusion, but a public one, compare to the restraint diffusion that I have taking knowledge of.
If you accept to get into the details of this, we will create a thread in wich we will evaluate with professionnals and yes, real experts, if your work had lead to an instrument that would be extremily helfull to contribute to our Mission wich is to reduce morbidity and mortality for all ations, Cultures, Communities and Individuals regarless of the system there in.
My first impression, from a restraint diffusion doc provided to me by Highly Qualified Public Health devotess, is that your Modus Operandi and work in Pregress could fro mtheirs large scope of unsertandins become with some adjustments an efficien, effective and very usefull instrument.
Whatever the scope of your openess I thank you to have been one Group that nurture Hope and Enthousiast that you have generated with the restraint diffusion done few months ago in a networkd that I am part of.
That you for the things to ponder upon, from all that you have sone.
You have indeed already accomplish something for very hard working people in needs of instruments for calibrations.
Thanks for your participation and bear with us.
Snow Owl
Are you saying that you can adjust the tool according to changing conditions meaning that you could adjust for nurses not working for other reasons besides the two that your article mentions? PPE is a very big problem, and most of us believe that the amount available will not be adequate. I am wondering if it is possible that you might factor the amount of PPE available into your program, and if doing so might help educate those using your tool to the realization that it is a hugh issue that will impact staff attendance because for most HCW, this is our first concern.
I had some thoughts about some of the other things that you mentioned such as the idea that offering child care would make it easier for nurses to come to work. Offering child care ordinarily would be a selling point, but probably not during a pandemic. Nurses are unlikely to take their healthy kids, and place them in child care because it would be considered too risky. Not even if it meant losing their jobs would most chance any possible exposure of their children to other kids. I am hearing many say that they are going to stay home with them.
I also felt that the supposition that 2 weeks off for sickness will most likely prove to be inadequate considering what we have been reading about survivors of bird flu. I am making a hugh assumption myself by thinking that H5N1 is what we might be dealing with. We do have the history of the survivors of 1918 to guide us also. We know that some of them developed neurological deficits, and other health problems because of their illness. My concern is that planners and users of the tool understand that nursing itself is very difficult, stressful, and demanding work during the best of times when we are well. We are not just numbers on a page. We will be people who are much more stressed because of the pandemic particularly if it lasts as long as they are saying it might. That kind of stress is going to be very hard on the immune system. I just do not see that most would be able to return to work after only 2 weeks recovery time. I know that planners can change those numbers, and that probably will have to happen as the pandemic unfolds, and we know more about what average recovery time really might be, but for now we just do not know enough about this.
Thanks again for responding.
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39457
I do applaud their efforts.
http://www.panalysismodel.com/panalysis_bsp.6_1_2008.pdf
Am I the only one that sees a problem with some of their suppositions
about staffing? These planners perhaps needed to interview the nursing
staff before making these assumptions.
http://allnurses.com/forums/f2/will-you-work-during-pandemic-.html (vhttp://allnurses.com/forums/f8/will-you-work-during-pandemic-206.html)
We estimate that our nursing staff will be able to work on average up
to 50 hours per week during the height of the outbreak. We assume
that our nurses will become sick at the same rate as the rest of the
population and that an infected nurse will be unable to care for patients
for 2 weeks. We also assume that for every nurse with the flu, one
more nurse will be absent from work to care for sick family members.
The hospital might find that by facilitating childcare for nurses
during the peak weeks, they can increase the average hours
worked per nurse from 50 to 53... this modest increase in average
hours...
Panalysis is designed to calibrate projected staffing numbers during pandemic conditions to staffing numbers under normal conditions based on user defined inputs. For our results, shortages are defined in "peopleweeks" as benchmarked to the average number of hours worked per week under normal conditions for any given staff type.
So, while we display our results in "peopleweeks", those results can be spliced to project staff coverage on a daily or hourly basis for any given week of the pandemic. This is because other parts of the model calculate bed occupancy rates. Therefore, a user could compare established Patient/HCW guidelines to their results and benchmark those results in terms of such guidelines. In fact, the model can be customized to do that sort of analysis automatically.
I hope this was helpful. We have made the model available for download to registered users on our site www.panalysismodel.com . You are certainly welcome to download it! Feel free to contact us by e-mail if you'd like to talk in detail about performing such an analysis.
Cheers,
Mark Abramovich
www.panalysismodel.com
info@panalysismodel.com
That's a very valid point raised about staffing assumptions and one which I absolutely agree could be considered.
Conceptually, we calibrate staffing shortages to the ability of the institution or region being modeled to that institution or region's ability to augment their staff with respect to staff on hand during normal conditions and the characteristics of the disease itself. The user can readily adjust for considerations such as shortages due to staff not reporting to work.
The mechanics of the model are such that different inputs and assumptions will produce different shortage levels.
So, the example in the paper is meant to demonstrate the types of analysis that can be accomplished using Panalysis. Our approach allows users to identify critical points where shortages occur. Users can therefore create and test different mitigation and response strategies by entering different inputs and subtracting the results between two scenarios. This is actually a a greater goal of the model, to provide a tool that can make scenario-driven analysis for pandemic planning practical and less time consuming.
I hope we can continue the discussion via message board. I have more thoughts on the topic.
Cheers,
Mark Abramovich
Developer Panalysis
Do you have test data available to use with the model?
What types of data points are you looking for?
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