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Modeling and simulation of emergency radiology unit at St. Paul's Hospital

University of British Columbia

Increased demand for healthcare services and limited medical resources result in long patient waiting time. This problem is a worldwide concern due to the increasing population and costs. Owing to the key role of the emergency department in a hospital, this study is on this department in St. Paul’s Hospital. The objectives are to reduce the patient waiting time and to balance resource utilisation. Discrete event simulation methodology is used to model the patient flow through the emergency radiology units. In this thesis, Arena simulation software is used for modeling, determining the waiting time, and identifying the bottlenecks in the system. These bottlenecks are alleviated using what-if analysis, which enables the radiology department managers make operational decisions based on the alternative scenarios examined. It was concluded that adding one physician and one X-Ray technologist for one shift per day improved the performance in the emergency radiology unit. Analysis of variance and the Tukey test were used to evaluate the effective decision factors. The results showed that the number of physicians followed by the number of X-Ray technologist had the most noticeable effect on the waiting time. The results obtained from the Tukey test also confirmed those of the Arena simulations.

Text

2020-05-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70020

Mechanical Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/