Modeling and analysis of hospital emergency department: An analytical framework and problem formulation

In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for modeling and analysis of hospital emergency departments (ED). Using such a framework, we intend to develop methods that can be used to improve ED performance through redistributing limited resources and through identifying and mitigating bottlenecks. Specifically, the following problems will be addressed: (1) analytical modeling and investigation of patient flow and quality of care (e.g., patient outcome or length of stay) in emergency departments, (2) identifying the factors that impede ED performance in the strongest manner and obtaining optimal distribution of limited resources for the best quality of care, and (3) determine optimal workforce configuration and resource allocation to achieve desired performance. A system-theoretic method is proposed to model ED as a complex network with split, parallel, closed, and re-entrant structures, for performance analysis, bottleneck mitigation and resource allocation.