A Discrete Event Simulation Model to Support Bed Management

Paolo Landa, Michele Sonnessa, Elena Tànfani, Angela Testi

2014

Abstract

In recent years, due to the overcrowding of Emergency Department (ED) and the growing concern in reducing the number of inpatient ward beds, it has become crucial to improve the capacity planning and control activities, which manage the patient flows from EDs to hospital wards. Bed Management has a key role in this context. This study starts by a collaboration with the Local Health Government (LHG) of the Liguria region aimed at studying the impact of supporting bed management with some operational strategies without increasing the bed capacity. A large amount of data was collected over a one-year period at public hospital in Genova and a preliminary observational analysis was conducted to get the main information about the flow of emergency and elective patients from ED to inpatient wards. A Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model has been then developed in order to represent the real system. A scenarios analysis is proposed to assess the best strategy to improve the system performance without increasing bed capacity, by simply synchronizing bed supply and demand. The model can be used as a decision support tool to optimise the use of the available resources as well as to improve the quality of the patient pathway inside the hospital.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Landa P., Sonnessa M., Tànfani E. and Testi A. (2014). A Discrete Event Simulation Model to Support Bed Management . In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2014) ISBN 978-989-758-038-3, pages 901-912. DOI: 10.5220/0005161809010912

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ha14,
author={Paolo Landa and Michele Sonnessa and Elena Tànfani and Angela Testi},
title={A Discrete Event Simulation Model to Support Bed Management},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2014)},
year={2014},
pages={901-912},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005161809010912},
isbn={978-989-758-038-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2014)
TI - A Discrete Event Simulation Model to Support Bed Management
SN - 978-989-758-038-3
AU - Landa P.
AU - Sonnessa M.
AU - Tànfani E.
AU - Testi A.
PY - 2014
SP - 901
EP - 912
DO - 10.5220/0005161809010912