Using simulation to help hospitals reduce emergency department waiting times: Examples and impact

In recent years, all acute hospitals in the UK have experienced unprecedented emergency department waiting times and hospital bed pressures. The consequences are overcrowded emergency departments, ambulance shortages, cancelled elective operations, low staff morale and financial penalties. To deal with the increasing numbers of patient admissions and delayed discharges hospitals must turn now to modelling and simulation to help increase their flexibility and ability to deal with demand variation. Hospitals face several issues that reduce their flexibility including the need for extreme value-for-money and specialization of care. This talk presents three ED case studies undertaken by an analytics team in the UK. The paper considers the impact of the work and challenges arising from their experiences of simulation modelling in acute hospitals. Final thoughts consider the future of ED simulation.