A System Dynamics Study of an Emergency Department Impact on the Management of Hospital’s Surgery Activities

Lucia Cassettari, Andrea Orfeo, Fabio Rolando, J. Bradley Morrison, Roberto Mosca, Roberto Revetria

2013

Abstract

In Italian hospitals equipped with an Emergency Department (ED), it is possible that patients coming from such a structure occupy beds that had previously been scheduled for other patients. This happens because of some law regulations that give these kind of patients preferential access to hospitalization, and it may cause reduction in, or even stop, scheduled surgery activities. For such a reason operating theaters, surgery teams, sterilization structure, etc., are often unable to operate in an efficient way. Regarding costs and hospital management, this issue become considerable, and maybe even more unpleasant for patients on the waiting list since their scheduled surgery date generally is delayed by a long time. Studying an ED, the authors decided to build a System Dynamics model to analyze the impact of the admission from ED on other hospital structures, and thus identify the critical threshold. Some “non trivial” corrective actions have been evaluated in order to suggest how to address the problem which is currently causing internal conflicts and, if not managed, is destined to grow over time.

References

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Cassettari L., Orfeo A., Rolando F., Revetria R., Mosca R. and Morrison J. (2013). A System Dynamics Study of an Emergency Department Impact on the Management of Hospital’s Surgery Activities . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-69-3, pages 597-604. DOI: 10.5220/0004617205970604


in Bibtex Style

@conference{ha13,
author={Lucia Cassettari and Andrea Orfeo and Fabio Rolando and Roberto Revetria and Roberto Mosca and J. Bradley Morrison},
title={A System Dynamics Study of an Emergency Department Impact on the Management of Hospital’s Surgery Activities},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={597-604},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004617205970604},
isbn={978-989-8565-69-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications - Volume 1: HA, (SIMULTECH 2013)
TI - A System Dynamics Study of an Emergency Department Impact on the Management of Hospital’s Surgery Activities
SN - 978-989-8565-69-3
AU - Cassettari L.
AU - Orfeo A.
AU - Rolando F.
AU - Revetria R.
AU - Mosca R.
AU - Morrison J.
PY - 2013
SP - 597
EP - 604
DO - 10.5220/0004617205970604