Research on the construction of the referral networks of city hospitals and invulnerability in response to major public health emergency

Abstract

In face of major public health emergencies, how to ensure the orderly and stable operation of city hospitals? Based on the theory and method of complex network, in this paper, we put forward the construction method of city hospital referral networks, analyze the static characteristics of the constructed network, discuss the invulnerability of networks with four attacking modes, and propose two ways (or integrated) to optimize the invulnerability of networks, which are: (i) Identifying and protecting key hospitals that can increase network invulnerability, (ii) Adding hospitals to the network. Taking hospitals of Wuhan as an example and using the proposed construction method for networks, in this paper, a directed-referral network I with 219 major hospitals in Wuhan is constructed. On the basis of network I, 16 mobile cabin hospitals, Huoshenshan hospital and Leishenshan hospital have been added, the referral-hospital network II of Wuhan is achieved. Compared with network I, network II has better referral ability and invulnerability.

Keywords

• major public health emergency
• referral networks of city hospitals
• complex network
• static feature quantity
• invulnerability