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Francesca P4 avatar image
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Francesca P4 asked Eric M commented

Patient Stay

Hi everyone!
I am modelling a hospital Operation Block in which patients arrive and are subject to 3 different kind of surgeries from 7.30 AM to 21:00 PM, then the OB closes. Typically, after 21:00 no one should be in the operating block. Actually I am not able to discard all the patients from 21:00 and this affects all the statistics that I am carrying out. Is there a way to prevent my model from making patients stay in the OB after 21:00? Thanks in advance for your help!

FlexSim 21.1.0
staytimepatient stay
· 2
5 |100000
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Serge A avatar image Serge A commented ·

Hi Francesca, could you please share you model? Otherwise it is difficult to say how exactly it can be modified. In general, you have three options:

1. Do not start new surgeries after a specific time before 21:00. If most of the surgeries last less than 1 hour, you may take the last surgery at 20:00, and by 21:00 your OB will be almost always empty. Another similar solution: do not begin complex surgeries which cannot be completed by 21:00 (> 1 hour after 20:00), postpone them until the next day.

2. Interrupt/finish all surgeries at exactly 21:00 and move the patients out, but it is not realistic IMO.

3. Let the surgeries continue after 21:00. Review how you calculate statistics.

If your model contains sensitive data, you can post a private question.

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Eric M avatar image Eric M commented ·

Hi @Francesca P4, was Serge A's answer helpful? If so, please click the red "Accept" button at the bottom of their answer. Or if you still have questions, add a comment and we'll continue the conversation.

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1 Answer

Serge A avatar image
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Serge A answered

This is an example of how you can postpone surgeries until the next day if they cannot be completed before 21:00:

  1. calculate surgery duration before doing it
  2. when the surgery room becomes available (its resource is finally acquired), check that the surgery can be completed in time
  3. if not, release the surgery room immediately, and wait until the next morning

1626430599700.pngTo represent a specific date and time ("today 21:00", or "tomorrow, 07:30"), you can use DateTime class and Model.dateTime attribute. See the model attached: SecondDaySurgery_example.fsm

If you look at the distribution of the Staytime of the patients, you can see that it is bimodal, and some patients stay 12 hours or more (overnight):

1626431036400.png


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1626431036400.png (7.1 KiB)
seconddaysurgery-example.fsm (253.9 KiB)
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