Modeling the emergency cardiac in-patient flow: an application of queuing theory
Open Access
- 20 April 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Health Care Management Science
- Vol. 10 (2), 125-137
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10729-007-9009-8
Abstract
This study investigates the bottlenecks in the emergency care chain of cardiac in-patient flow. The primary goal is to determine the optimal bed allocation over the care chain given a maximum number of refused admissions. Another objective is to provide deeper insight in the relation between natural variation in arrivals and length of stay and occupancy rates. The strong focus on raising occupancy rates of hospital management is unrealistic and counterproductive. Economies of scale cannot be neglected. An important result is that refused admissions at the First Cardiac Aid (FCA) are primarily caused by unavailability of beds downstream the care chain. Both variability in LOS and fluctuations in arrivals result in large workload variations. Techniques from operations research were successfully used to describe the complexity and dynamics of emergency in-patient flow.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- Predicting capacities required in cardiology units for heart failure patients via simulationComputer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 2003
- Average length of stay, delayed discharge, and hospital congestionBMJ, 2002
- Modelling for the planning and management of bed capacities in hospitalsJournal of the Operational Research Society, 2002
- CORONARY DISEASE: The natural history of acute myocardial infarctionHeart, 2000
- Application of discrete-event simulation in health care clinics: A surveyJournal of the Operational Research Society, 1999
- Capacity planning for intensive care unitsEuropean Journal of Operational Research, 1998
- Sensitivity to the Service-Time Distribution in the Nonstationary Erlang Loss ModelManagement Science, 1995
- The case for using industrial quality management science in health care organizationsPublished by American Medical Association (AMA) ,1989
- Modeling emergency department operations using advanced computer simulation systemsAnnals of Emergency Medicine, 1989
- A Proof for the Queuing Formula: L = λWOperations Research, 1961