Bed Assignment Based on Provider Workload

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Amelia Radtke asked Dec 8, '17 Amelia Radtke commented May 15, '18

Bed Assignment Based on Provider Workload

I am working on a urgent care simulation that has six beds and either 2 or 3 providers working, each provider “owns” 2 or 3 beds accordingly. When patients arrive the nurses room them to keep the providers even (first patient goes to Provider 1, second to Provider 2, third to Provider 3, fourth to 1 and so on). I expect that determining all of this will come down to FlexScript which is where I’m running into challenges.

How would I do this? My current model assigns providers based on the room so I am trying to build the logic into the patient destination of the rooming step. My pseudo code is below:

Global Variables: Provider1Count, Provider2Count,
Provider3Count
If (getgroupstat(MDs, 1) == 2)
{
                
If (Provider1Count <= Provider2Count)
 
{
                
 
Provider1Count ++
Return (ExamTable1
|| ExamTable2 ||
ExamTable3)          \\ how is this done?  What type of variable am I returning?
 
}
 
Else
 
{
                
 
Provider2Count++
Return (ExamTable4
|| ExamTable5 ||
ExamTable6) 
 
}
}
Else if (getgroupstat(MDs, 1) ===3)
{
                
 
If (Provider1Count <= Provider2Count)
 
{
                
 
Provider1Count ++
Return (ExamTable1
||
ExamTable2)
 
}
 
Elseif (Provider2Count <= Provider3Count)
 
{
                
 
Provider2Count++
Return (ExamTable3
||
ExamTable4) 
\\ how is this done? What type of variable am I returning?
 
}
 
Else
 
{
                
 
Provider3Count++
Return (ExamTable5
||
ExamTable6) 
\\ how is this done? What type of variable am I returning?
 
}
}

Finally, are there any guidelines around the necessary headers?

Thank you!

Software Version:

FlexSim HC 5.3.2

flexscript urgent care bed assignment patient allocation

Answer 1 · 2017-12-08T17:35:02Z

Cliff King answered Dec 8, '17 Amelia Radtke commented May 15, '18

Amelia,

For your education, I've included a translation of your psuedo code into real code that could be used in the Patient Destination field of the patient's room placement activity; however, I think there might be better approaches. The code returns NULL in cases where none of the exam tables are available for the intended provider. If the Patient Destination field returns NULL (i.e. 0), then default behavior in the software will force the Patient Destination field to be reevaluated at future times whenever a downstream location becomes available. Don't forget you'll need to decrement the global variables whenever the patient leaves the care of the provider, and make sure you decrement the variables just before the patient leaves the downstream exam tables rather than just after.

You also might want to check out my answer in the following post. There are similarities to your modeling situation that you might find helpful.

I'm also thinking there might be some more straight forward approaches to consider, but their likely hood depends on how you intend to switch between two or three providers. Is this switch something that needs to occur dynamically during a model run, or is it something that can be switched up front as simply a new modeling scenario scenario?

if (getgroupstat(MDs, 1) == 2)
{
	if (Provider1Count <= Provider2Count)
	{
		Provider1Count ++
		if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable1))
			return ExamTable1;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable2))
			return ExamTable2;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable3))
			return ExamTable3;
		else
			return NULL;
	}
	else
	{
		Provider2Count++
		if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable4))
			return ExamTable4;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable5))
			return ExamTable5;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable6))
			return ExamTable6;
		else
			return NULL;
	}
}
else if(getgroupstat(MDs, 1) == 3)
{
	if (Provider1Count <= Provider2Count)
	{
		Provider1Count ++
		if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable1))
			return ExamTable1;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable2))
			return ExamTable2;
		else
			return NULL;
	}
	else if (Provider2Count <= Provider3Count)
	{
		Provider2Count++
		if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable3))
			return ExamTable3;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable4))
			return ExamTable4;
		else
			return NULL;
	}
	else
	{
		Provider3Count++
		if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable5))
			return ExamTable5;
		else if (getavailablelocation(ExamTable6))
			return ExamTable6;
		else
			return NULL;
	}
}

· 6

Amelia Radtke commented · Dec 08, 2017 at 05:41 PM

Thank you Cliff!

I don't believe I need to decrement the global variables - patients are allocated based on how many patients have arrived to the provider not how many are currently in the care of the provider (which does become a serious issue when one provider operates much faster than the other...)

Right now we only need to change the number of providers for modeling scenarios. However the number of providers working on a given day might be a discussion in the future state.

0 ·

Cliff King Amelia Radtke commented · Dec 08, 2017 at 06:01 PM

In that case, I think your approach may be the easiest solution. Let us know if it works for you!

0 ·

Amelia Radtke commented · Dec 11, 2017 at 05:38 PM

I keep receiving the following warning:

WarningMODEL:/Tools/PatientBin/Normal Patients - Lab in UC/Normal Patients - Lab in UC>variables/ActivityTable/ 40_Rooming/PatientDestinationline 9Too few parameters in call to getgroupstat

Any thoughts on how to clean that up?

0 ·

Amelia Radtke Amelia Radtke commented · Dec 11, 2017 at 06:55 PM

I've discovered that writing "getgroupstat(MDs, 1, 0, 0)" cleans up the compiler - thanks!

0 ·

Cliff King Amelia Radtke commented · Dec 11, 2017 at 08:10 PM

Amelia,

I should have caught this before. There is actually a better command that you ought to be using. The getgroupstat() command was deprecated awhile back. It has been superceded by the command called getnumresources().

0 ·

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