Simulating health care systems: A tutorial

This paper is an introduction to discrete event simulation for modeling the operations of healthcare systems. It begins with a brief discussion on the use of simulation to model various areas of healthcare systems. These models were developed to support decision making, to gain a better understanding of the operations of these systems, or to determine how these systems can be improved. The tutorial provides an overview of the simulation modeling process, with a focus on model conceptualization to visualize healthcare systems. An example of an endoscopy clinic is used to convey model conceptualization and the power and flexibility of this modeling methodology.