Scenario-Based Optimization Strategy Analysis on a Gastroenterology Clinic: Using an Integrated Simulation Method: Fid-Bau Portal

Scenario-Based Optimization Strategy Analysis on a Gastroenterology Clinic: Using an Integrated Simulation Method

Li, Yongkui / Zhang, Yan / Chi, He / Han, Yilong / Yu, Tao

Currently, healthcare systems have become large, complex, and very dynamic environments. Factors including space layout, patient behavior, and medical procedures interact and relate to each other, and ultimately affect hospital operational efficiency. The improvement in hospital operational efficiency involves the comprehensive consideration of multiple variables and objectives, which makes decision-making tasks extremely challenging. The objective of this study is to identify system bottlenecks and explore potential improvement strategies to reduce the patient waiting time and length of stay while maximizing the use of key healthcare resources. Simulation in healthcare is an effective approach to understand the interdependencies between human-oriented and infrastructure-oriented variables in complex systems and to explore decision scenarios from different stakeholders or practitioners. This study used the integration of discrete event simulation (DES) and agent-based simulation (ABS) to simulate medical procedures and patient behavior of a gastroenterology clinic at Shanghai. On this basis, different improvement measures were evaluated, such as human resource adjustment strategies and department resource modifications programs. The research results were validated and indicated that the integrated simulation method has successfully helped clinic administrators achieve better performance while using resources more efficiently. This paper aims to assist hospital decision-makers in optimizing medical resource allocation while improving patient satisfaction. It also provides a reference to other research involving multivariate and multi-objective optimization analysis.