Adjusting Daily Inpatient Bed Allocation to Smooth Emergency Department Occupancy Variation.
discrete-event simulation
emergency department operations
inpatient bed allocation
overcrowding
Journal
Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland)
ISSN: 2227-9032
Titre abrégé: Healthcare (Basel)
Pays: Switzerland
ID NLM: 101666525
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
28 Mar 2020
28 Mar 2020
Historique:
received:
26
02
2020
revised:
22
03
2020
accepted:
27
03
2020
entrez:
2
4
2020
pubmed:
2
4
2020
medline:
2
4
2020
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Overcrowding in emergency departments (ED) is an increasingly common problem in Taiwanese hospitals, and strategies to improve efficiency are in demand. We propose a bed resource allocation strategy to overcome the overcrowding problem. We investigated ED occupancy using discrete-event simulation and evaluated the effects of suppressing day-to-day variations in ED occupancy by adjusting the number of empty beds per day. Administrative data recorded at the ED of Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TCVGH) in Taiwan with 1500 beds and an annual ED volume of 66,000 visits were analyzed. Key indices of ED quality in the analysis were the length of stay and the time in waiting for outward transfers to in-patient beds. The model is able to analyze and compare several scenarios for finding a feasible allocation strategy. We compared several scenarios, and the results showed that by reducing the allocated beds for the ED by 20% on weekdays, the variance of daily ED occupancy was reduced by 36.25% (i.e., the percentage of reduction in standard deviation). This new allocation strategy was able to both reduce the average ED occupancy and maintain the ED quality indices.
Identifiants
pubmed: 32231146
pii: healthcare8020078
doi: 10.3390/healthcare8020078
pmc: PMC7349152
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Subventions
Organisme : Taichung Veterans General Hospital
ID : TCVGH-T1077806
Organisme : Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
ID : MOST 106-2628-E-029-001-MY3
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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