Abstract
Several types of transportation are required daily to support medical activities and services to the patient at a hospital. Intrahospital transportation activities range from transporting inpatients with limited mobility from one location to another to moving samples from one care unit to the hospital laboratory. In practice, patient and material transportations are often managed independently. However, dealing with both types of requests in a centralized framework can help improve the system performance and ensure a better use of resources. It also results in a more complex decision-making process. Given the high level of uncertainty related to intrahospital transportation, especially regarding patients, adequate tools are required to help hospital managers plan, organize, and operate such a service. In this study, we propose a discrete-event simulation tool to support the management of an intrahospital transportation service. The tool is validated in the context of a Canadian hospital, and used to evaluate and compare the system performance under several decisions.
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Painchaud, M., Bélanger, V., Ruiz, A. (2017). Discrete-Event Simulation of an Intrahospital Transportation Service. In: Cappanera, P., Li, J., Matta, A., Sahin, E., Vandaele, N., Visintin, F. (eds) Health Care Systems Engineering. ICHCSE 2017. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 210. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66146-9_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66146-9_21
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