LEAN Healthcare Trends and Emergency Room Simulation
Plans to improve patient flow and reduce wait times through an emergency room are often impeded by bottlenecks in the process. Changes in operational planning can be made through LEAN studies, however, there are usually more than one potential solution and we can only measure outcomes once we implement what appears to be the leanest process.
So while emergency rooms have generally increased their efficiency through programs such as ED-PIP and LEAN healthcare; increased efficiency doesn’t reduce demand. Thus we are left with increasing volume and a need for emergency room simulation tools to measure future impacts on capacity management and to improve patient flow.
Emergency Room Simulation
Emergency rooms are being asked to respond to these challenges through targets, but to reach these targets we need to better understand “how” to improve patient flow. The next step is to make incremental changes to our care delivery models to cope with the coming demands; however, doing so is time consuming, costly, often disruptive and doesn’t always have the desired outcomes.
Emergency room simulation provides healthcare providers with a virtual replica of emergency room operations; providing accurate patient flow simulation as well as capacity planning tools. The patient flow simulation can then be used to conduct powerful what-if analysis; allowing healthcare providers to instantly visualize the effects of proposed changes prior to implementation, all without putting a single life at risk.
Process Transparency and Knowledge Transfer
Healthcare providers must be able to engage several stakeholders when proposing operational changes. Simulation provides an advantage in the fact that it allows healthcare providers to demonstrate the effects of capital expenditure or LEAN healthcare on a live process. Time can be compressed visualizing the effects across weeks, months, and even years. Visual8 healthcare clients have found this to be invaluable, not only when presenting new ideas, but also in developing and enhancing strategic planning.
With emergency room simulation healthcare providers now have the tools they require to move beyond LEAN healthcare, identifying and eliminating the root causes of process inefficiency and bottlenecks in patient flow. As well as being able to clearly demonstrate to stakeholders how strategic planning and capital expenditure will improve patient flow and reduce wait times.
- Measure Strategies: Use your hospital data to model future outcomes of strategies / care pathways & capacity-matching, flow rates, and wait times.
- Demonstrate: Visualize flow patterns and outcomes including delays & bottlenecks with real variability – Simulate each activity.
- Predict: Capacity planning – staff, space, equipment, wait times & effects on systems. Predict future bottlenecks caused by changes in delivery.
Learn more about how our healthcare provider clients are benefiting from Visual8 emergency room solutions
