Design of hospital admissions scheduling system using simulation

The ultimate objective of the research reported herein is to design an admissions scheduling system which can control hospital occupancy. This paper reports on the initial phase, of the research--demonstrating the technical feasibility of developing a simulation model of patient arrivals to and discharges from a hospital, which can be used to design the scheduling system. The specific steps that were accomplished for demonstrating technical feasibility of model development were: (1) develop a hospital simulation model, which can be used for designing the scheduling system; (2) validate the simulation model in two test hospitals; and (3) use the model to design an improved scheduling system which reduces the variability in daily census.