THE IMPACTS OF HEALTHCARE RESOURCES ON SERVICES OF EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT: DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION WITH BOX-BEHNKEN DESIGN

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of healthcare resources on outputs defined as waiting time of patients, the length of stay, the number of patients treated and the cost of the resources for the emergency department (ED). Data were obtained with a discrete-event simulation model for the ED and Box-Behnken experimental design technique was used to analyze the resources of healthcare that affect the outputs of ED. We have emphasized the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare institutions on the quantity and quality of healthcare resources in the present study. Among the findings, by calculating the number of patients treated at maximum level (157 patients) with minimum cost (768.73 units of money), an improvement of 38.94 % of the patient waiting time and 20.87 % of the length of stay has been achieved. We support that the number of healthcare resources has a slight effect on the healthcare systems, while the main thing is that the quality of healthcare resources is more important according to the result of this study.