Healthcare simulation: a case study at a local clinic

Today, researchers and analysts are beginning to uncover the potential for using simulation in the health care field; with a multitude of interactions between patients, physicians, nurses, and technical and support staff, simulation can be an invaluable tool. Inefficiencies can be eliminated or resource allocation changed to determine an optimal setup. Primarily, simulation has been used in the health care field in comparison studies of alternative systems for resource or scheduling requirements. When analyzing such alternatives, the standard performance measures are typically reported: throughput, time in system, and queue times and lengths. This paper is a systems analysis of a clinic using the above mentioned performance measures along with another proposed performance measure, total cash flow.