Modeling interruptions and patient flow in a preoperative hospital environment

Abstract

Late starting surgeries at a Greenville Memorial Hospital have been shown to cause process and scheduling disruptions, and are a major contributor to dissatisfaction among patients and hospital staff. The preoperative system requires the preparation of a high volume of patients, each with an individual set of characteristics and array of required tasks before surgery. Staff resources do not have a prescribed sequence of activities nor mutually exclusive duties. A novel discrete event modeling paradigm has been adopted for simulating the complex behavior of the preoperative system, identifying the underlying causes of process inefficiencies, and testing mitigating strategies. Current investigations are underway to shift the prescriptive approach of resource decision-making towards an agent-based approach, allowing resources to select their workload in such a way that achieves maximum utility for the agent.