Abstract

BACKGROUND: Patients, who seek care in emergency department, are waiting in queue and the health care provision in the department seems to be too overcrowded; the extended waiting time increases dissatisfaction and delays admission of new patients. In most of the hospitals considered to be overcrowded, the discharge rate of patients is managed by the use of “theory of queues”. This study was done to observe waiting time of patients in emergency department by “queue theory analysis” and computer simulator in an Iranian hospital.

METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study in which simulation software (Arena, version 14) was used to build the 8 models. They run in a period of one month. The input information for the models was extracted from the hospital database and through sampling. The objective of this study was to evaluate the response variables of “waiting time” and “number waiting” of each level.

RESULT: In level 2A, with increased number of beds with 20 beds, the waiting time decreased to 0.45 minutes and the percentage of deaths declined to 26.2%, but the number of discharge from this level declined, too. In level 3 with increased number of beds 2 times, waiting time decreased to 74 minutes and the percentage of death declined to 3.7% but the number of discharge from this level to ICU declined, too.

CONCLUSION: This study showed the magnitude of ED overcrowding in Nemazee hospital. Increasing the bed capacity in the ED could reduce the waiting time in each part of ED.

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