research-article

Reducing emergency department overcrowding: five patient buffer concepts in comparison

Authors:

Erik M. W. Kolb,

Sebastian Schoening,

Taesik LeeAuthors Info & Claims

WSC '08: Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation

Pages 1516 - 1525

Published: 07 December 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding is a common medical care issue in the United States and other developed nations. One major cause of ED crowding are holding patients waiting in the Emergency Room (ER) for inpatient unit admission where they block critical ED resources. With input data from a hospital in Massachusetts/USA, we tested five patient buffer concepts which aim at relieving pressure of the ER. The buffers are also assumed to improve patient and staff satisfaction through their design tailored to needs in patient flow. To ensure patients safety, we performed tests with discrete event simulation in which we discovered 'triage to bed time' reductions of up to 22% and 'diversion hour' decreases of up to 24%. All buffers managed to run with significantly less resources than the ER. Our findings have a potential impact on hospital process flow due to clear results which offer substantial improvement of hospital organization.

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Cited By

Bedoya-Valencia LKirac E(2016)Evaluating alternative resource allocation in an emergency department using discrete event simulationSimulation10.1177/003754971667315092:12(1041-1051)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/0037549716673150
Gul MGuneri A(2015)A comprehensive review of emergency department simulation applications for normal and disaster conditionsComputers and Industrial Engineering10.1016/j.cie.2015.02.01883:C(327-344)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cie.2015.02.018
Marmor YWasserkrug SZeltyn SMesika YGreenshpan OCarmeli BShtub AMandelbaum ADunkin AIngalls R(2009)Toward simulation-based real-time decision-support systems for emergency departmentsWinter Simulation Conference10.5555/1995456.1995737(2042-2053)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1995456.1995737
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Reducing emergency department overcrowding: five patient buffer concepts in comparison
1. Applied computing
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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WSC '08: Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Winter Simulation

December 2008

3189 pages

ISBN:9781424427086

Editors:
Scott Mason
University of Arkansas
,
Ray Hill
Air Force Institute of Technology
,
Lars Mönch
University of Hagen
,
Oliver Rose
University of Dresden
,
General Chair:
Thomas Jefferson
Intel Corporation
,
Program Chairs:
John W. Fowler
Arizona State University
,
Ricki G. Ingalls
Oklahoma State University

Sponsors

IIE: Institute of Industrial Engineers
INFORMS-SIM: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences: Simulation Society
ASA: American Statistical Association
IEEE/SMC: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society
SIGSIM: ACM Special Interest Group on Simulation and Modeling
NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology
(SCS): The Society for Modeling and Simulation International

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Winter Simulation Conference

Publication History

Published: 07 December 2008

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WSC08

Sponsor:

IIE
INFORMS-SIM
ASA
IEEE/SMC
SIGSIM
NIST
(SCS)

WSC08: Winter Simulation Conference

December 7 - 10, 2008

Florida, Miami

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WSC '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 249 of 304 submissions, 82%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 3,413 of 5,075 submissions, 67%

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Cited By

Bedoya-Valencia LKirac E(2016)Evaluating alternative resource allocation in an emergency department using discrete event simulationSimulation10.1177/003754971667315092:12(1041-1051)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1177/0037549716673150
Gul MGuneri A(2015)A comprehensive review of emergency department simulation applications for normal and disaster conditionsComputers and Industrial Engineering10.1016/j.cie.2015.02.01883:C(327-344)Online publication date: 1-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cie.2015.02.018
Marmor YWasserkrug SZeltyn SMesika YGreenshpan OCarmeli BShtub AMandelbaum ADunkin AIngalls R(2009)Toward simulation-based real-time decision-support systems for emergency departmentsWinter Simulation Conference10.5555/1995456.1995737(2042-2053)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1995456.1995737
Ramirez AFowler JWu TDunkin AIngalls R(2009)Analysis of ambulance diversion policies for a large-size hospitalWinter Simulation Conference10.5555/1995456.1995715(1875-1886)Online publication date: 13-Dec-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1995456.1995715

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