Over the years, I have had several occasions to use medical facilities for myself and my family. Some visits were routine, such as for a diagnostic tests or images. Others were for much more critical visits to an emergency department. As my visits spanned many facilities and many time periods, I observed a dramatic difference in the service provided. In the case of bad service I just had to wonder “Didn’t anyone ever study this operation? Did anyone ever simulate it?”
Simulation can bring significant benefits to healthcare, just as it does in other types of systems. Some of those benefits come from the simulation’s ability to:
- Account for variability in human behavior
- Account for variability in demand
- Capture complexities and interdependencies
- Capture system performance over a period of time
- Support continuous process improvement and evaluation of new scenarios
- Provide an objective basis for evaluating policies and strategies
Here are a few possible applications to illustrate how simulation is often used in the healthcare industry:
New Facility Design – Evaluate design to assure that present and future objectives will be met. Reduce capital costs by “running” the facility under various scenarios and identifying excess capacity . Reduce operating costs by supporting lean and six sigma analyses. Increase throughput through process flow optimization and identification of bottlenecks and capacity constraints.
Emergency Department (ED) – Decrease LOS (Length of Stay) and LWBS (Leave Without Being Seen) yielding higher patient satisfaction. Improve staff efficiency and improve room and resource utilization resulting in lower costs.
Outpatient Lab and Surgery – Determine optimal staff and resource allocation. Balance scheduled demand with the often-critical unscheduled demand. Decrease lab and diagnostic turn-around time. Identify non-value-added and redundant processes.
Ambulance Service – Evaluate operational scenarios for both road and air-based vehicles. Evaluate new technology to determine their effect on the entire system. Pre-plan dynamic utilization-based response guidelines to optimize performance during major ED demand periods.
Vaccine Distribution – Evaluate regional material stocking strategies, distribution strategies, and staffing.
Often the benefits from these studies are reported in the millions of dollars so they are well worth the undertaking.
One source of additional information is the Society for Simulation in Healthcare which is having their annual conference in January. Another source is the Society for Health Systems which offers the latest in process analytics, tools, techniques and methodologies for performance improvement.
Dave Sturrock
VP Products – Simio LLC