Multi-Hospital Validation of Critical Care Simulation Model

The objective of the study reported herein was to design and validate a general simulation model of a hospital's critical care units, such that with minor changes to the model's input variables, the model can be used to represent the critical care area in a variety of different hospitals. A model was written in GPSS/H and validated for four Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers (VAMCs). The model includes exponential patient interarrival time distributions and lognormal length of stay distributions. The results from this research suggest that a general critical care model can be written which is valid for multiple hospitals. The general model described in this article is easily tailored to the unique patient characteristics and critical care unit configurations of a given hospital.