Systemic simulation model for defining the number of hospital beds in a high-complexity health care center using the system dynamics methodology

Abstract

The clinics, hospitals and health care centers are daily in need to optimize the professional, pharmaceutical, hospital or endowment-infrastructure resources. However, due to multiple random and complex factors, this is a demanding endeavor as they do not have the methodologies that may help the health manager in the process. Because of this, the aim is to develop a systemic methodology and a planning model to define the bed sizes. It is intended to improve the planning and administration of any health care center. To begin, this work studied the key factors affecting the planning, relationships and components in the bed size definition. These inputs were used to set out a causal model and a simulation model under a system dynamics approach integrating these factors. Finally, the simulation results indicate that the need of additional beds is about 9% or 16 beds on average. The results from this work should encourage the managers to develop a clear and holistic idea on this issue and, therefore, to better plan the health care resources.