Simulation of VA Hospital Length of Stay for analyzing additional inpatient bed capacity

摘要

The development of simulation models continues to provide effective solutions to problems in healthcare systems. The insight into how to effectively use the limited hospital resources contributes to the improvement of quality of the services. This document describes an application of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to the Veteran Affairs (VA) Sacramento Medical Center. The model was developed as a research contribution to support managerial decisions regarding the increase of occupancy to reduce waiting time of patients. This investigation was developed with the aim of increase the quality of the services offered by the VA Hospital and provide to veterans and their families better access to healthcare.