An integrated simulation-DEA approach to improve quality care of medical centres
by Ali Azadeh; Masoome Sepahi; Sara Motevali Haghighi
International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking (IJPMB), Vol. 3, No. 3, 2013

Abstract: Overcrowding is common problem for emergency departments (ED) and related decision making process. This is due to low staff availability, limited budget, high costs and high patient volume. The stated issues decrease the quality care of medical centres and EDs. Therefore, EDs and medical centre must implement highly efficient systems that maximise the utilisation of their available resources to minimise the cost and minimise time in system to maximise patient satisfaction. In this paper, computer simulation and CCR output-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) model are used to evaluate the efficiency of various alternatives to improve and optimise the quality care of EDs. Moreover, computer simulation is used to generate the related outputs for DEA model. DEA model is then executed with proper inputs and outputs to provide optimisation model from a list of potential alternatives. This is the first study that introduces an integrated simulation-DEA as an optimisation approach for handling patient satisfaction in the EDs.

Online publication date: Sat, 12-Jul-2014

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