A simulation-based study for managing hospital emergency department's capacity in extreme events

Abstract

Hospital emergency departments’ capacities to deal with a patient surge play an important role in preparedness for natural or man-made disasters. This paper examines how emergency departments in healthcare facilities could optimise the workflow during extreme events when there is a patient surge. This paper proposes a framework to reconfigure the workflow while maintaining treatment equality. Our results show that reorganising lower priority work processes and relocating the resources associated with those processes can shorten total waiting time in the emergency department, allowing better management of patient flows.