Simulation analysis of an adjusted gravity model for hospital admissions robust to incomplete data

BACKGROUND: Gravity models are often hard to apply in practice due to their data-hungry nature. Standard implementations of gravity models require that data on each variable is available for each supply node. Since these model types are often applied in a competitive context, data availability of specific variables is commonly limited to a subset of supply nodes. METHODS: This paper introduces a methodology that accommodates the use of variables for which data availability is incomplete, developed for a health care context, but more broadly applicable. The study uses simulated data to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology in comparison with a conventional approach of dropping variables from the model. RESULTS: It is shown that the proposed methodology is able to improve overall model accuracy compared to dropping variables from the model, and that model accuracy is considerably improved within the subset of supply nodes for which data is available, even when that availability is sparse. CONCLUSION: The proposed methodology is a viable approach to improve the performance of gravity models in a competitive health care context, where data availability is limited, and especially where a the supply nodes with complete data are most relevant for the practitioner. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-023-02033-0.