Reduce Overcrowding in Emergency Rooms with ED Simulation

San Diego, CA, December 09, 2008 --(PR.com)-- Emergency Departments, globally, are overcrowded. While there are many opinions on the reasons for overcrowding, there's been little management science applied to this complex problem.

It is widely recognized in industries other than health care that simulation is often the only effective method to analyze complex workflow. ED Simulation is designed for the health care market, and specifically to introduce simulation technology to Emergency Department management.

Users of ED Simulation can predict the effects of changes in such elements as physician staffing and efficiency, arrival volumes, bed availability, lab/X-Ray turnaround time and disposition type and duration. It can further predict the financial losses due to decisions to divert patients, or through patients leaving without being seen (LWBS) due to long waits.

With ED Simulation, hospital administrators or physicians can:
• Determine how to minimize patient waiting times and ED overcrowding
• Test effectiveness of physician schedules
• Assess the impact of Lab/X-Ray/MRI or admission delays
• Identify where workflow “bottle-necks” exist
• Evaluate the effect of patient arrival and symptom mix
• Calculate revenue effects of diversion or patient LWBS
• Test disaster preparedness scenarios

"ED Simulation allows users to focus on areas where change can lead to real improvement in patient throughput and time to assessment," explains Arlene Phillips, President. "For example, we tested a simulation where the physician assessment times were decreased by 50%. The average patient throughput and time to assessment was hardly changed – clearly the risk of a potential decrease in quality was not offset by any measurable gain to the patient experience. “

“We’ve used ED Simulation to test and fine-tune various emergency-preparedness scenarios,” continues Ms. Phillips. “The advantage of ED Simulation is that it is not a purchased one-time application. As the environment changes, the simulation files can be easily modified and then re-run. Improvement in patient experience is an iterative process - once one "bottle-neck" is identified and fixed, a different "bottle-neck" necessarily appears. ED Simulation allows administrators and physicians the flexibility to test their processes in any environment they can imagine.”

"Our development team was led by an ED physician with more than 20 years of experience in a variety of hospitals and fully understands the current lack of Emergency Department workflow decision support. We’re proud to say that we’ve designed our Emergency Department simulation application to be so intuitive that anyone, with even moderate computer experience, can model and simulate their Emergency Department within a few hours,” says VP, Application Development, Jerry Kolbuck.

“The most difficult part of the simulation is actually the data collection of assessment times, treatment times, etc.,” continues Mr. Kolbuck. “However, most Emergency Departments have this data already, from other studies. Even without previous data, it is surprising how closely physicians can estimate all of the required data. One of the issues generally discussed is lab turnaround times – some days it’s thirty minutes, other days it’s an hour and a half. But, that’s the point of the simulation – run it with a thirty minute turnaround, and then see what the effect on patient experience is like with a ninety minute turnaround. You can quickly see where turnaround time, or time to admit a patient, or delay for a consultation, can have a dramatic effect on patient throughput.”

This latest version of ED Simulation has a completely re-designed user interface and has added functionality including:
· Separation of EMS and waiting room wait times
· Eleven pre-supplied activity probability distributions
· Comprehensive visualization of patient location and wait times and physician availability and activity
· Detailed real-time reporting of patient and activity metrics
· Extensive detail and summary reporting of activity durations and start times

For further information, please see their website at www.edsimulation.com. Special plans for educational or research purposes are offered.

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