Patient flow management and capacity planning for Cardiac units, mathematical modeling and discrete event simulation approach

One of the main challenges of hospital managers is to decide the number of existing beds in each department of the hospital. While، more beds results in an increase in the current cost of the hospital، decreasing the number of beds might cause disorder in patients flow. The main objective of this paper is minimizing the total cost as well as maximizing the patients flow in the network، considering the practical limitations of the hospital. this study is aimed to investigate following subjects: identify the current limitations in changing of department capacity، thorough interview with hospital managers and other personnel in Modares Hospital، cardiac patient flow analysis، simulation of current flow، determining applicable scenarios and choosing the best scenarios by mathematical modeling in order to minimize total cost and maximize patient flow. through lots of existing scenarios، 31 applicable scenarios have been determined by limitations analysis. Finally، 8 best scenarios were found. Generally، results show that decreasing the number of beds in CCU and increasing the number of beds in Post-CCU can improve patients flow، considering cost constrains. The Proposed approach in this study can be a general guide for capacity planning of hospital departments with considering practical limitations. Since some health administrators oppose the creation of post-CCU، it is possible to compare patients flow status in the presence or absence of this department by proposed approach in this paper.