Rationalizing healthcare budgeting when providing services with mandated maximum delays: A simulation modeling approach

To determine the budget needed by a healthcare network to provide government mandated mental health services, a simulation model of those services was built, verified and validated; it was then used to identify where mandated delivery times were not being met and where staff should be reallocated. In addition to the obvious benefits of this approach, a less obvious benefit was that the discovery process needed to build the model identified additional opportunities for providing better care with less resources. A further benefit of this work was the potential, recognized by the chief financial officer, that this approach could be used throughout the network to rationalize staffing levels, and thus make it possible to provide more, better or timelier outcomes with the same resources throughout the network.