Modeling and simulation to improve patient admission process: a case study in an educational and treatment hospital

Increasing medical costs around the world and limited resources have led health decision-makers to focus on measuring and improving their performance to effectively deliver high-quality care. In such an environment, timeliness is one of the most significant attributes for service performance and patient satisfaction. As a result, decision-makers are continually looking for ways to reduce wait times, as this is the primary measure of care timeliness. In this article, the main contribution is to reduce patient waiting time during admission process and increase patient satisfaction incorporating combination of business process modeling (BPM) and discrete event simulation (DES). With the BPM notation (BPMN2.0) modeling language, the patient admission process is modeled. ARENA software has been used to simulate current (As-Is) and redesigned (To-Be) processes, and Process Analyzer is used to evaluate improvement scenarios. The process has been optimized by utilizing OptQuest to reduce waiting time. Based on the results, work in process (WIP) has been reduced by 29% and waiting time has been reduced by 6% in the optimal scenario. The root causes of long queues have been identified as redundancy in the patient admission process, a shortage of reception staff, non-value-added administrative activities, and suboptimal allocation of resources.