Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation
Emergency departments in hospitals are having many difficulties in achieving the performance levels required by health regulators and society. The waiting times as well as the total throughput time are examples of performance indicators that emergency departments need to improve in order to provide...
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doaj-09d00249b1164f1e97f034b7d36587e52021-01-16T00:06:21ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172021-01-011180580510.3390/app11020805Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event SimulationAlexandre Castanheira-Pinto0Bruno S. Gonçalves1Rui M. Lima2José Dinis-Carvalho3Algoritmi Center, Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, PortugalAlgoritmi Center, Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, PortugalAlgoritmi Center, Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, PortugalAlgoritmi Center, Department of Production and Systems, School of Engineering, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimarães, PortugalEmergency departments in hospitals are having many difficulties in achieving the performance levels required by health regulators and society. The waiting times as well as the total throughput time are examples of performance indicators that emergency departments need to improve in order to provide a better service to the community. To achieve improvement of performance, the present paper shows a methodology to assist the design process of an emergency department using simulation techniques. In this study, the emergency department of a hospital located in the northern region of Portugal was considered to test the proposed simulation technique. The emergency department initial state was assessed, in terms of patient flow, as well as the human resources needed at every stage of the service. In order to understand in depth the process that a patient goes through during an emergency episode, a comprehensive study was performed on the hospital database. This allowed the analytical description of an emergency episode, which was further used as an input to the simulation model. After developing the simulation model with the information obtained by the hospital’s database, a validation stage was performed. Finally, in order to achieve an optimized design for the emergency department several variant scenarios were considered and evaluated. This methodology proved to be very useful in determining an optimized operation for complex, and non-linear systems.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/2/805operations managementemergency departmentdiscrete event simulationlean healthcaresimulation model |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Alexandre Castanheira-Pinto Bruno S. Gonçalves Rui M. Lima José Dinis-Carvalho |
spellingShingle |
Alexandre Castanheira-Pinto Bruno S. Gonçalves Rui M. Lima José Dinis-Carvalho Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation Applied Sciences operations management emergency department discrete event simulation lean healthcare simulation model |
author_facet |
Alexandre Castanheira-Pinto Bruno S. Gonçalves Rui M. Lima José Dinis-Carvalho |
author_sort |
Alexandre Castanheira-Pinto |
title |
Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation |
title_short |
Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation |
title_full |
Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation |
title_fullStr |
Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation |
title_full_unstemmed |
Modeling, Assessment and Design of an Emergency Department of a Public Hospital through Discrete-Event Simulation |
title_sort |
modeling, assessment and design of an emergency department of a public hospital through discrete-event simulation |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
series |
Applied Sciences |
issn |
2076-3417 |
publishDate |
2021-01-01 |
description |
Emergency departments in hospitals are having many difficulties in achieving the performance levels required by health regulators and society. The waiting times as well as the total throughput time are examples of performance indicators that emergency departments need to improve in order to provide a better service to the community. To achieve improvement of performance, the present paper shows a methodology to assist the design process of an emergency department using simulation techniques. In this study, the emergency department of a hospital located in the northern region of Portugal was considered to test the proposed simulation technique. The emergency department initial state was assessed, in terms of patient flow, as well as the human resources needed at every stage of the service. In order to understand in depth the process that a patient goes through during an emergency episode, a comprehensive study was performed on the hospital database. This allowed the analytical description of an emergency episode, which was further used as an input to the simulation model. After developing the simulation model with the information obtained by the hospital’s database, a validation stage was performed. Finally, in order to achieve an optimized design for the emergency department several variant scenarios were considered and evaluated. This methodology proved to be very useful in determining an optimized operation for complex, and non-linear systems. |
topic |
operations management emergency department discrete event simulation lean healthcare simulation model |
url |
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/2/805 |
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