I 'm new to Flexsim healthcare and wanted some help to build a simulation model for hospital’s emergency department (ED) to handle both COVID and non-COVID patients. Below is a conceptual breakdown of how to implement this model in FlexSim Healthcare, including patient flow, resource management, and logic for handling both patient types. Simulation Logic for FlexSim Healthcare:
1. Patient Arrival • Use Source objects to generate two types of patient streams:
• COVID Patients
• Non-COVID Patients
Both patient streams will have their own arrival rates defined using Poisson distribution or real-world data (e.g., patient arrival rate per hour). Let's say 20 COVID Patients/hr and 80 Non-COVID Patients/hr
Each stream will feed into different entry points into the ED.
2. Triage Process: After arrival, patients are directed to a Triage Station where they are categorized by severity:
• Critical: 20%
• Severe: 50%
• Mild/Non-urgent: reminder
The triage process will require a nurse resource, and the triage decision can be determined based on probabilities (e.g., 20% critical, 50% severe, 30% mild).
COVID patients are additionally flagged based on their status and directed to specific zones within the hospital (COVID vs non-COVID areas).
3. Queuing and Resource Allocation: After triage, patients join different queues based on their condition:
• COVID Critical Queue
• COVID Non-Critical Queue
• Non-COVID Critical Queue
• Non-COVID Non-Critical Queue
Each queue is processed by available resources such as doctors, nurses, beds, and ICU beds. Use Task Sequences to dynamically allocate these resources.
For COVID patients, assign dedicated staff and resources to avoid cross-contamination.
4. Treatment Areas: Based on triage, patients are routed to appropriate treatment areas:
• COVID Critical patients are sent to ICU beds.
• COVID Non-Critical patients are sent to regular COVID-dedicated wards.
• Non-COVID Critical patients may also need ICU beds or surgery.
• Non-COVID Non-Critical patients are treated in regular ED rooms.
• Treatment times can be modeled using distributions (e.g., Exponential distributions based: keep it 10 minutes).
5. Resource Allocation: I want to create Resource Objects for:
• Doctors
• Nurses
• Beds (Regular and ICU)
• Ventilators
I don't know how to use the Resource Manager in FlexSim Healthcare to manage the allocation of these resources (please help), ensuring that when resources are unavailable, patients queue up and wait. •
For COVID patients, apply a cleaning delay after bed usage or equipment usage to simulate disinfection protocols. 6. Reassessment Loop (Deteriorating Patients) •
I want to include a reassessment process for patients whose conditions may worsen while waiting. This can be achieved through a Time Trigger or Event-triggered Process: • Periodically check if a patient’s condition has worsened and reroute them to a higher priority queue (e.g., from regular COVID beds to ICU
