Hello,
I'm working on a clinic model where a doctor will only go and see the patients (in order of entry time) once there are 5 or more patients in the system.
I got the MD activity to start after 5 patients are present. However, I am having difficulty having the MD go to the patient that entered the system first.
How can i set the staff destination to be the patient location of the patient that has been in the system for the longest time?
thank you,
The answer to your question will depend on how you have your model set up. Are you able to post your model? You may make your post private so only FlexSim employees see the model you attach, if that is a requirement for you, or create a separate simplified model and post that.
I have attached my model. burnclinicmodelv11-autosave.fsm
I've made modifications to activity 70_ResidentEvaluation's next activity section (to begin activity 80_MDExam) once patient census > 4. I suspect activity 80_MDExam's staff destination section has to be modified.
thank you
The Next Activity field is only evaluated once and needs to return a valid next activity at that time. The field will never be reevaluated, so for those patient's in your model whose activity 70 is evaluated when the census of the model is <= 4, will never continue with their track, never be seen by the MD and never leave the model. So, this is the first issue we should address in your model.
Tell me a little more about this getcensus(model) > 4 requirement you're trying to implement. Is this a requirement that only exists at the beginning of the day, so that you don't engage the MD until at least 5 patients have arrived and been seen by the RN? Or is this a requirement you want to exist throughout the day? If the later, you'll need to give me more rules for how that is to work, because it could get complex in a hurry to address all the possible scenarios for when the number of patients rises and falls through the threshold number of 5.
Hi Cliff. Thank you for taking time to answer my questions.
You are correct in your assumption. I mean to engage the MD once the first 5 examtables have patients in them. My temporary solution was to set the next activity condition to getcensus(model) >4.
Currently, the MD will not be called to attend his/her patients until the first five rooms have patients ready to be seen (I am trying to show the inefficiency in that process).
Once the activity has started, I'd like activity 80 to begin and attend the patients in the order they arrived.
I've modified your model to keep track of the number of patients who have finished being seen by the Resident on a Global Variable I named NumPatientsReady. Based on your description, I think this will be a better counter than the model census for knowing when to allow the MD to start seeing patients.
I use a User Event tool to kick off an event at time 0 that stops MD_1 from being able to accept any tasks using the stopobject() command. Later, using the Activity Finished Trigger on activity 70_ResidentEvaluation, I increment the NumPatientReady variable and allow MD_1 to start accepting the queued up tasks if the NumPatientsReady variable is equal to 5.
Let me know if this doesn't exactly do what you want.
4 People are following this question.
FlexSim can help you understand and improve any system or process. Transform your existing data into accurate predictions.
FlexSim is a fully 3D simulation software environment. FlexSim can be used to simulate any process in any industry.
FlexSim®, FlexSim Healthcare™, Problem Solved.®, the FlexSim logo, the FlexSim X-mark, and the FlexSim Healthcare logo with stylized Caduceus mark are trademarks of FlexSim Software Products, Inc. All rights reserved.
