A Simulation Based Study for Managing Hospital Resources by Reducing Patient Waiting Time

Abstract

In Pakistan most of the local hospitals have limited resources and budget deficits to address day-to-day routine activities. This is further intensified by inefficient management of hospital resources. Hence, it is essential to efficiently manage hospital resource as it will lead to health care costs reduction and increased patient's satisfaction. The focus of this research is to demonstrate the use of the tool in healthcare system, specifically in Pakistan, and balance the resources of a hospital, which will reduce the waiting time for the Outdoor Patients Departments. The resources at the Outdoor Patients Department including X-ray, Labs, Ultrasound and the ECG sections were included in the computer-based simulation model with the aim to find the bottleneck departments as they are the main cause of waiting time in the hospital. These bottlenecks are anticipated due to the lack of an optimized model, which has been addressed in this simulation. Based on the simulation study an optimized model is proposed to the hospital administration where the resources are readjusted resulting in the utilization of underutilized departments and decreasing the waiting time of the stations particularly the bottleneck stations. The motivation behind this research is to aid hospitals in better management of resources, which can ultimately improve customers (patients) satisfaction.