Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation

First Page

1490

Keywords

overcrowding, Emergency Departments

Last Page

1499

Abstract

One of the key challenges to health care access in Canadian hospitals is growing overcrowding of the Emergency Departments (EDs), leading to the medical personnel overload, and the excessive waiting times to receive proper care. These adverse effects directly impact the patient satisfaction levels, the ability of the medical professionals to attend promptly to patients' health issues, and generate unnecessary costs. Addressing the sources of waste and improving the process provides better care and higher patient satisfaction, as well as increases operational efficiency and the ability of the medical professionals to intervene on time. This paper describes an effort aimed at improvement of patients' experience over their ED stay. A combination of Lean tools were used to analyze, assess and improve the current situation. Simulation models based on current and future (desired) states were developed. Comparative analysis of both enabled verification of feasibility of proposed solutions, and provided quantifiable results.

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