The world’s changing demographic trends inevitably lead to new challenges in the delivery of healthcare services. As the population ages, the consequent demand for various types of medical treatments changes as well, but the process is not uniform, neither for particular age–gender cohorts nor for different diagnoses’ groups. A discrete event simulation (DES) model was built to forecast future healthcare demand based on population projections for one Polish administrative region. Population forecasts, formulated based on simulation experiments carried out in previous studies, were inputted into the DES model, together with patient data taken from the regional health fund. A simulation was run up to 2030 to predict future number of older patients across different diagnosis categories. The results show that a change in the demographic structure and in particular, in the population’s ageing, will lead to significant shifts in the distribution of health needs for hospital treatment.

世界不断变化的人口趋势不可避免地给医疗保健服务的提供带来了新的挑战。随着人口老龄化，随之而来的对各种类型医疗的需求也在发生变化，但这个过程并不统一，无论是对于特定的年龄-性别群体还是不同的诊断群体。建立了一个离散事件模拟 (DES) 模型，以根据一个波兰行政区域的人口预测来预测未来的医疗保健需求。基于先前研究中进行的模拟实验制定的人口预测与从区域卫生基金中获取的患者数据一起输入到 DES 模型中。模拟运行到 2030 年，以预测未来不同诊断类别的老年患者数量。