Emergency departments I: the use of simulation and design of experiments for estimating maximum capacity in an emergency room

Abstract

This work presents the results obtained after using a simulation model for estimating the maximum possible demand increment in an emergency room of a private hospital in Chile. To achieve this objective the first step was to create a simulation model of the system under study. This model was used to create a curve for predicting the behavior of the variable patient's time in system and estimate the maximum possible demand that the system can absorb. Finally, a design of experiments was conducted in order to define the minimum number of physical and human resources required to serve this demand.