Emergency department simulation and determination of optimal attending physician staffing schedules

Efficient allocation and utilization of staff resources is an important issue facing emergency department (ED) administrators. Increased pressure from competition, health care reform, reimbursement difficulties, and rising health care costs are primarily responsible for the high level of interest in this, and other ED operating efficiency issues. The paper discusses the use of computer simulation to test alternative ED attending physician staffing schedules and to analyze the corresponding impacts on patient throughput and resource utilization. The simulation model can also be used to help identify process inefficiencies and to evaluate the effects of staffing, layout, resource, and patient flow changes on system performance without disturbing the actual system. The development of this model was based on the Emergency Department at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.