ENHANCING OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY OF HOSPITALS USING DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION

Healthcare needs have grown and healthcare organizations have become large and complex. In populous country like India, hospitals are not able to provide sufficient facilities to the patients. As a result, patients have to wait for long times in queues. Many times there are not sufficient drugs available in stock. Purpose of research is to achieve operational excellence in hospital by applying simulation. Operational excellence of the hospitals means that  Patients have to wait for less time in queues.  There is no shortage of drugs. For this, simulation is used. Simulation is a technique where experiments are conducted using models. These models represent real-world systems. Simulation for queues of hospital:- Arrival times of patients and Service time of the server is collected from hospital. Then histogram is plotted. From the histogram, data is identified with a particular distribution and then new arrival and service times are generated using random variate generator of that distribution. Using these values, simulation is conducted. Output of simulation is analyzed. If it is found that server is overloaded, then decision to add new server is taken.Simulation for inventory management of hospital:- Data for demand and lead time is collected from the hospital. Then data is identified with a particular distribution using histogram. New demand and lead time values are generated using random variate generator of a particular distribution. Using these values simulation is conducted. After simulation, if shortage is more then reorder level can be changed or order size can be changed. Major results Operational excellence can be achieved through appropriate decision making as result of simulation. Output of simulation is analyzed and modifications in queuing and inventory are done. This will lead to operational excellence of hospitals.