Improving Hospital Patient Flow Efficiency- A Simulation Approach

Governments all over the world are struggling to reduce their healthcare spending and increase the efficiency of their healthcare systems. In this paper, we looked into one of the key hospital processes in Hong Kong which inpatients will be involved - Patient flow management. Patient flow management affects the whole operation system of hospital as inpatients usually occupy many resources including space and facilities like elevators. We studied one of the major hospitals in Hong Kong regarding their patient flow management problems and benchmarked with a hospital in Canada. The similarities and differences between two hospitals were identified in the comparison section. We investigated the congestion of the patient flow in two major steps. Firstly, we analyzed the operation data from the hospital, the bottleneck and most frequent paths were identified. We obtained qualitative comments on the operations from the hospital to consolidate our data analysis. Also, clustering techniques were used. Secondly, simulation models were adopted to demonstrate the solutions and improvements of the patient flow with animation. Finally, based on the results of the models for improvements, we highlighted some possible suggestions for hospital to implement.