TY - GEN
T1 - Analysis of ambulance diversion policies for a large-size hospital
AU - Ramirez, Adrian
AU - Fowler, John
AU - Wu, Teresa
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - The overcrowding of Emergency Departments (EDs) is a well-known problem that has been analyzed on multiple occasions. Queuing theory and simulation have been applied extensively to specific ED situations, such as staff planning, waiting time reduction and capacity investment. However, there are remaining problems in the EDs that need more study. One of them is the ambulance diversion, which may cause a delay in the treatment of urgent patients therefore jeopardizing their welfare. Since ED are complex system and setting the diversion state in EDs is a subjective decision, a detailed modeling and analysis of cause and effects of such a decision is beneficial. In this research, we build a case-study and analyze the impact of diversion policies in various performance measures of the ED through a designed experiment using a discrete-event simulation model.
AB - The overcrowding of Emergency Departments (EDs) is a well-known problem that has been analyzed on multiple occasions. Queuing theory and simulation have been applied extensively to specific ED situations, such as staff planning, waiting time reduction and capacity investment. However, there are remaining problems in the EDs that need more study. One of them is the ambulance diversion, which may cause a delay in the treatment of urgent patients therefore jeopardizing their welfare. Since ED are complex system and setting the diversion state in EDs is a subjective decision, a detailed modeling and analysis of cause and effects of such a decision is beneficial. In this research, we build a case-study and analyze the impact of diversion policies in various performance measures of the ED through a designed experiment using a discrete-event simulation model.
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U2 - 10.1109/WSC.2009.5429200
DO - 10.1109/WSC.2009.5429200
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:77951585955
SN - 9781424457700
T3 - Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference
SP - 1875
EP - 1886
BT - Proceedings of the 2009 Winter Simulation Conference, WSC 2009
T2 - 2009 Winter Simulation Conference, WSC 2009
Y2 - 13 December 2009 through 16 December 2009
ER -