A Simulation Modeling Approach to Understanding Workflow Changes in Healthcare: The Case of CPOE Deployment at the Ottawa Hospital

This work describes and illustrates the use of simulation modeling for evaluating and analyzing the impacts of workflow changes in healthcare resulting from the deployment of a computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system. It is motivated by our longitudinal research program which purports to explore simulation modeling as one of the means that can be applied not merely to contribute to an increased acceptance and use of CPOE systems, but also to aid in decision making. The setting used is The Ottawa Hospital, one of the Canada´s largest teaching hospitals, and its multi-phase, multi-year CPOE deployment project for laboratory and diagnostic imaging orders to improve both patient safety and quality of care. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed simulation-based tool can be effectively applied in its current level of development to quantitatively evaluate and compare different options of workflow changes within a given set of operational and organizational constraints.