Using Simulation to Examine the Effect of Physician Heterogeneity on the Operational Efficiency of an Overcrowded Hospital Emergency Department

Mini EURO Conference on Improving Healthcare: new challenges, new approaches

物理学;医药卫生

Kuo, Y.-H.^1 ; Leung, J.M.Y.^2 ; Graham, C.A.^3

Stanley Ho Big Data Decision Analytics Research Centre, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong^1

Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong^2

Accident and Emergency Medicine Academic Unit, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong^3

关键词: Computational results;    Computational studies;    Decision support tools;    Emergency departments;    Hospital emergency departments;    Operational efficiencies;    Simulation approach;    Simulation model;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/616/1/012017/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/616/1/012017

学科分类：卫生学

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

In this paper, we present a case study of modelling and analyzing the patient flow of a hospital emergency department in Hong Kong. The emergency department is facing the challenge of overcrowding and the patients there usually experience a long waiting time. Our project team was requested by a senior consultant of the emergency department to analyze the patient flow and provide a decision support tool to help improve their operations. We adopt a simulation approach to mimic their daily operations. With the simulation model, we conduct a computational study to examine the effect of physician heterogeneity on the emergency department performance. We found that physician heterogeneity has a great impact on the operational efficiency and thus should be considered when developing simulation models. Our computational results show that, with the same average of service rates among the physicians, variation in the rates can improve overcrowding situation. This suggests that emergency departments may consider having some efficient physicians to speed up the overall service rate in return for more time for patients who need extra medical care.