Reduce Er Wait Time
USING COMPUTER SIMULATION MODELING TO REDUCE WAITING TIMES IN EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS
Igor Georgievskiy, Alcorn State University Zhanna Georgievskaya, Alcorn State University William Pinney, Alcorn State University ABSTRACT This paper examines the wide-spread problem of extended waiting times for health services, in the context of the Emergency Department (ED) at a regional hospital. In the first phase of the study, a field observation was conducted to document the current operation of the ED. The second phase of the study will be the building and validation of a Flexsim computer model of the ED for modeling, analysis, visualization, and optimization of the patient flow within the ED. The validity of the model will be established by comparison of simulation results with actual data. In the third phase, the model will be utilized to evaluate the impacts of different proposed operating strategies on the waiting times and throughput rates for patients in the ED. ____________________________________________________________
__________________ INTRODUCTION The problem of long waiting times is common for all entities of the health care system. Much attention has been given to the problem of uninsured individuals’ use of the Emergency Department (ED) for many routine health concerns that more properly should be addressed in the physician’s office setting. In this circumstance, the primary health care provider is forced to offer the best outcomes within limited resources. Optimization of patient flow and bottleneck elimination in key departments could become a possible solution that decreases operational cost and boosts quality of care. The authors collected actual data over a one-year period for arrivals, waiting times, service times, and the severity of the patients’ conditions. These data were categorized by month, day of the week, and time of day. The data were collected for four different waiting situations within the ED system. The objective was to identify those
Igor Georgievskiy, Alcorn State University Zhanna Georgievskaya, Alcorn State University William Pinney, Alcorn State University ABSTRACT This paper examines the wide-spread problem of extended waiting times for health services, in the context of the Emergency Department (ED) at a regional hospital. In the first phase of the study, a field observation was conducted to document the current operation of the ED. The second phase of the study will be the building and validation of a Flexsim computer model of the ED for modeling, analysis, visualization, and optimization of the patient flow within the ED. The validity of the model will be established by comparison of simulation results with actual data. In the third phase, the model will be utilized to evaluate the impacts of different proposed operating strategies on the waiting times and throughput rates for patients in the ED. ____________________________________________________________
__________________ INTRODUCTION The problem of long waiting times is common for all entities of the health care system. Much attention has been given to the problem of uninsured individuals’ use of the Emergency Department (ED) for many routine health concerns that more properly should be addressed in the physician’s office setting. In this circumstance, the primary health care provider is forced to offer the best outcomes within limited resources. Optimization of patient flow and bottleneck elimination in key departments could become a possible solution that decreases operational cost and boosts quality of care. The authors collected actual data over a one-year period for arrivals, waiting times, service times, and the severity of the patients’ conditions. These data were categorized by month, day of the week, and time of day. The data were collected for four different waiting situations within the ED system. The objective was to identify those
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