Emergency Department Simulation - Case Study

ED Predictive Modeling

ED Basic Identifies

• Identify patient flow, travel constraints, hallways, and basic constraints.
• Manage patient input properties based on the defined input data

ED Layout

Tag the CAD layout to auto-generate distances of travel for patient, providers and transport.

Patient Arrival History

Load the data arrival history data set and connect it to the model. Data can be retrieved dynamically from Excel, Databases, or EMR systems.

Treatment Cycle

Define the treatment cycle time per acuity and patient type. Waiting times Must not be imported into the model, but generated and optimized by Simcad Pro® Health.

Wait times and delays need to be reduced and eliminated. This data is used for validation purposes only and MUST NOT be used as model inputs. The constraints are based on availability and capacity and NOT on time parameters to be optimized.

Providers’ Schedules and Availability

Shifts, cost, availability and other provider based constraints.

Capacity Planning

The model is now built with a validated flow and accurate behavior based on patient arrival data and length of stay validation. Current state capacity, constraints and bottleneck analyses allow for efficient capacity projections and planning.

Generate distributions to analyze future state fluctuations.
** Distributions don’t have to fit a predefined known curve.

• Arrival distributions (Based on Method).
• Treatment time distribution based on Acuity and Gender
• Triage Time distributions

Patients

• Patients with different acuities require different treatment flows, and interact at varying intervals with the providers
• Patients can change acuity during treatment. Acuity may increase or decrease based on assessment

Providers

• Define different schedules, shifts and specialties
• Enable provider travel based on distances for increase simulation accuracy
• Define provider teams as needed based on acuity and patient properties

With the model validated, provider analysis (efficiency and utilization), along with external department impact are used to analyze the ED. By analyzing the internals of the ED along with all external factors, Length of Stay reduction and capacity increase can be achieved and sustained beyond the initial improvement effort.

Based on improvement requirements, additional model details may be added...

• Expand Treatment flows to incorporate external department interaction (X-Ray, MRI. Labs ... )
• Expand the supporting departments, and exploring a more detailed impact on the model

Dynamic Value Stream Map Generated from Model Constraints

Auto Generated Spaghetti Diagram