Simulating the impact of an increase in patient volume on a government emergency department in Malaysia

• Main Authors: Ahmad, Norazura, Abdul Ghani, Noraida, Kamil, Anton Abdulbasah, Mat Tahar, Razman
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: RA Public aspects of medicine
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/7854/1/noraz.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/7854/; http://www.ipedr.com

This paper explores the potential of computer simulation model to access the effect of patient increase to emergency department performance and the patient flow.A simulation model of emergency department is developed based on discrete even simulation and system dynamics modeling approach to capture the behavior of an integrated system.Several scenarios are conducted to help management determine the required resources due to patient: volume increase that will not breach the national target time for patient to be attended to in emergency department.Results from the scenarios show that a 7% increase of patients affects most of the performance measures.In addition, medical assistants are the important resources in emergency department operations.