Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 3, 2026
06:48
Emergency Undocking in Robotic Surgery: A Simulation Curriculum
Published on: May 20, 2018
9.6K
Addressing the variation of post-surgical inpatient census with computer simulation
Theodore Eugene Day1, Albert Chi, Matthew Harris Rutberg
1The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Office of Patient Safety and Quality, AE25H, 3401 Civic Center Blvd, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA, dayt@email.chop.edu.
Pediatric Surgery International
|January 31, 2014
Summary
A Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model of a pediatric perioperative department showed that increasing inpatient beds or implementing a new discharge strategy improved patient placement. Both strategies effectively increased the proportion of patients recovering in surgical beds.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Operations Research
- Pediatric Surgery
- Simulation Modeling
Background:
- Effective patient flow management is critical in pediatric perioperative departments.
- Optimizing bed allocation and discharge processes can significantly impact patient recovery and resource utilization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model for a large pediatric perioperative department.
- To compare the effectiveness of increasing post-surgical inpatient beds versus implementing a new discharge strategy on patient bed allocation.
Main Methods:
- A DES model of the pediatric perioperative system was created and validated against one year of real-world inpatient data.
- Ten years of simulated data were generated for both control (baseline) and experimental scenarios (additional beds, new discharge strategy).
- Key outcome measures included the percentage of patients in post-surgical beds and the daily census of inpatient volumes.
Main Results:
- The proportion of patients recovering in surgical inpatient units increased from 79.0% to 89.4% with the discharge strategy and 94.2% with additional beds.
- The daily mean number of patients in medical beds decreased from 9.3 to 4.9 (discharge strategy) and 2.4 (additional beds).
Conclusions:
- Validated DES models offer valuable insights into healthcare system dynamics.
- Both increasing inpatient bed capacity and implementing a new discharge policy can significantly improve patient placement and reduce reliance on medical beds for surgical recovery.
- These findings support data-driven decision-making for optimizing hospital resource allocation and patient flow.
