Identify areas of inefficiency and streamline your processes so that you release more time for direct patient care.
Because of how important our work is in healthcare, we all have the same goal in mind - the best possible care for the patient.
In healthcare, modifying any process - from staffing ratios to O.R. schedules - affects more than just cost and convenience. It directly impacts the health and wellbeing of every patient.
Simulation can help to encourage stakeholders to look at their processes in different ways, understand what's going on and improve it for the better.
When improvements are found these can reduce waste and inefficiencies and as a result release time back to direct patient care.
Simulation gives you confidence in your evidence based decisions. Try out lots of 'what if' scenarios until you are sure that your decision is the right one.
Simulation even builds in real life randomness so you can be sure your model performs just like your actual process and be confident that you are doing what's right for patient care.
Reduce inefficiencies, improve quality outcomes and increase patient access.
Patient safety is a serious global public health issue. Estimates show that in developed countries as many as 1 in 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care (World Health Organization, June 2014).
In this workshop we examined how other high risk sectors use simulation to improve safety and how simulation could be more widely applied in healthcare. We demonstrated simulations of delays, interruptions, adoption of best practice and interventions in sepsis.
Geisinger Health System (GHS) are a large regional medical center, that have been on the forefront of innovative solutions to clinical and operational issues.
Prior research indicated that nurses on inpatient units spend upward of 15% of their time on logistics/supply chain tasks. A project was put in place to determine the actual nursing time spent doing logistics/supply chain tasks and to develop a new model for logistics inside the hospital.
Research from other high risk industries shows that simulation is routinely used to reduce risk. Aviation, oil and gas, and maritime industries have a long history of using simulation in just this way. So why not healthcare? The published literature is scarce on the use of computer simulation to support improvements, although medical simulation is making an impact.
We wanted to address this and have spent the last 6 months researching and building simulation models which demonstrate how to improve patient safety using simulation.
Read MoreWhether simulation models can be reused for similar problems is a controversial issue in literature.
This article reflects on our experience of re-using simulation models particularly in modeling pathways of patient care and discusses the results delivered and the benefits of reusable simulations.
Watch the webinar recording and access the simulation below to find out how simulation is helping to work towards a fully integrated service provision - with people at the center of the services that Leicestershire delivers.
Cheryl Davenport, Director of Health and Care Integration at Leicestershire County Council, talks about how simulation is helping to evaluate how emergency hospital admissions can be reduced.
The workshop looks at patient care pathways and demonstrates how simulation can combine process flow perspectives to include; services, clinical best practice, and the progression of patients through disease states to test the impact of improvement initiatives on patient care, outcomes, costs and resource utilization.
If you're considering simulation for your next project, our team are happy to help.
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