Using Simulation to Manage Unscheduled Care

Managing unscheduled care is high on the agenda of many health systems worldwide due to a focus on reducing hospitalizations, re-admission rates, and costs.

Guest speaker Dr Paul Schmidt, explored how simulation is being used to model a new operational strategy for unscheduled care at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, UK.

Using real life examples, we described an unscheduled care system in more detail including:

• Key challenges for unscheduled care operations
• Principles of a rational operational strategy (patient centered services, queues, lean principles etc.)
• Key stakeholder considerations (patient flow, bed capacity, staffing etc.)
• Modeling approach
• Outcomes and Lessons

About Paul Schmidt

Paul is a consultant physician in acute medicine with 16 years’ experience in acute clinical service development. His research and quality improvement work focuses on the reliability, safety and efficiency of hospital care, using routine data from clinical systems to model and evaluate outcomes and system performance. He has been extensively involved in the development and deployment of point of care clinical information systems including the award-winning VitalPAC system, now widely deployed in UK hospitals. He has recently completed an MBA through Warwick Business School, using SIMUL8 models for key aspects of his thesis on unscheduled care.