How simulation is used in healthcare

Managing Outpatient Clinic Flow

Problems can arise at different parts of the outpatient clinic process making it difficult to effectively care for high volumes of patients.

SIMUL8 Professional can be used to test changes to improve efficiency without affecting the daily running of a clinic.

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How simulation can help

Physician availability and patient punctuality are not the only factors which can affect outpatient clinic efficiency, but they can have a significant impact. Simulation can be used to test methods to improve patient visit efficiency without affecting the daily running of a clinic.

Test Outpatient Appointment Scheduling. For example, using an accurate simulation of your system, you can test the effects of Single Appointment or Block Booking on your clinic in terms of throughput, physician efficiency, and wait times.
Test Patient/physician Punctuality.
SIMUL8 allows for the randomness of real life. Use the software to see what effect tardiness will have on the wait times in clinic.
Test effects of Do Not Attend rates and Cancellations on your system.

Could you improve outpatient flow with simulation?

Talk to us about your challenges, ask our healthcare simulation expert questions and explore SIMUL8 Professional’s features in a confidential demonstration.

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Learn more about simulation for managing outpatient flow

Research

Simulating Waiting List Management

Patients' experiences of waiting for treatment have changed dramatically in recent years in the United Kingdom's National Health Service. There has been a substantial reduction in the mean wait but the characteristics of the distributions have also changed significantly, implying a change in priorities and waiting list management. Simulations are often used to assess proposals for investment and reorganisation that might affect waiting time. This paper examines the effectiveness of a FIFO model.

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Case study

Using simulation to inform decision-making on National Bowel Screening

Using SIMUL8, Maasstad hospital could test multiple scenarios and determine possible outcomes which would influence its decision to join the National Bowel Screening program.

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Blog article

Outpatient Rehab Staffing - How many do you Need?

100% utilization is not a realistic - nor desirable - outcome. So how do we set an optimal utilization target? It depends on your market, your patients, and your goals - and you can use simulation to pinpoint the right target for your facility.

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