Modeling and Optimizing Patients’ Flows Inside Emergency Department based on the Simulation Model: A Case Study in an Algerian Hospital

In Algeria, as in many other countries, the Emergency Department (ED) of the hospital, is the main entrance to the hospital, which provides Healthcare to patients threatened with death, and which faces several issues, emphasized by resource limitation. Our work presents a description of patient flow inside the ‘ED’ of Chalabi Abdelkader Hospital, Mascara, Algeria. This study aims to prevent the care complication scheme by adopting a workflow approach in order to design the patient flow in the chosen ‘ED’. The objective is to enhance patients’ flows, to improve the quality of the patient supervision, by targeting the minimization of the total and waiting times. A simulation model of the study system will be built based on the acquired data, and it will be validated by domain experts for a maximal rapprochement to the reality. Then, many simulations instances will be realized using Rockwell ARENA simulator to evaluate the impact of the proposed solutions. As a result of this study, we provided to ‘ED’ supervisors many improvement solutions and recommendations to the issues identified in the modeling phase.