Improvement of Waiting Time for Patients Referring to Emergency Room Using Discrete Event Simulation

Many simulation studies have been conducted in the hospitals and first in the emergency departments to increase the productivity. The first issue in the field of service quality and hence the patient right is “waiting time”. The goal of this study was to reduce patients waiting times, emergency service timing, modeling and improving using discrete event simulation.

This was a descriptive - analytical study by the cross-sectional method on 150 patients referred to the emergency department in a public hospital. All necessary data were collected using questionnaire and through observation. Simulation model was designed using Arena software.

Our computer simulation model indicates that the maximum waiting time is the time waited for the test request till the results are received by the MD and also the time is necessary for the consultation and examination purposes. Among the five different scenarios, alternative 5 is more interesting economically since it requires only three additional staffs to bring down waiting times.

According to research results, to reduce patient waiting time, the Triage processing in the emergency departments and the employment of emergency medicine expert, and the ordering of the diagnostic processes in the early stages of treatment as such as laboratory ordering for emergency patients are of main necessity.