Within hospitals, operational planners can do a lot of analysis and modelling work around patient flow and capacity to inform management decisions. The element of my work that particularly interests me is how we can provide the right kind of models and tools to assist them to provide the required outputs to assist decision making.
I mentioned in an earlier post that we are enhancing the optimisation and simulation capabilities that we have built into CapPlan. Using this functionality we can now create and optimise theatre/OR plans based on wait lists and relevant constraints around bed capacity and available surgeons.
For example, we can tell hospitals what their bed occupancy is going to look like from the type of activity that they plan to put through theatre/OR.
Earlier this year, one of our Canadian customers wanted to have a clear plan in place in regard to the type of sessions and activity they would be putting through theatre/OR six months in advance. The Winter Olympics were happening in Vancouver and they needed to know what impact the games would have on the hospital.
They made the decision to reduce their scheduled elective sessions from six to four, to ensure occupancy for surgical patients was reduced and additional beds would be available for medical patients. They then asked us to forecast what their bed requirements would be over the Olympics based on their revised theatre/OR plan.
CapPlan Theatre Flow/OR showed what the potential impacts would be from the surgical perspective. We were then able to combine this with occupancy forecasts for other types of patients, such as medical, to provide a ‘whole of hospital’ impact. This enabled the hospital to respond accordingly by allocating appropriate beds and resourcing. The forecasts proved highly accurate (95%) and the hospital ran smoothly throughout the Olympics.
Andrae Gaeth Product Specialist, Emendo