A decision support simulation model for bed management in healthcare

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Operations Research
• Health Systems Engineering
• Simulation Modeling in Medicine

Background:

• Effective bed management is crucial for timely healthcare access, high quality, and cost-efficiency.
• Limited resources necessitate strategic allocation for optimal patient flow.
• Hospital bed management directly impacts patient wait times and overall healthcare system performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a discrete event simulation model for hospital bed management.
• To assist in strategic planning and staff scheduling decisions.
• To analyze the impact of operational changes on patient flow and resource utilization.

Main Methods:

• Developed a discrete event simulation model for a 50-bed, four-department hospital system.
• Utilized five years of patient records (23,019 patients) for model construction.
• Analyzed departmental and system-wide performance, including admissions, transfers, length of stay (LOS), and queue times.

Main Results:

• Reducing bed turnover time by 1 hour significantly decreased patient queue wait times.
• A 10-hour reduction in average LOS led to significant decreases in average patient wait and queue times.
• Adding two beds demonstrated considerable improvements in average wait time, queue length, and LOS across departments.

Conclusions:

• Simulation modeling is highly applicable to healthcare settings for operational analysis.
• Hospital operational behavior can be modeled using readily available bed management data.
• Simulation allows testing of changes without incurring real-world costs or risks, informing management decisions.