Generic Process Mapping and Simulation Modeling of Inpatient Units in a Medical Center

摘要

Maximizing nurse efficiency is of great concern for all Lean/Six Sigma departments in healthcare systems in order to eliminate wasted efforts in their operations. This paper reports a methodology for process mapping of inpatient units in a medical center and development of a simulation model to measure and improve the nurse efficiency. Process mapping is based on applying lean/six-sigma principles to the tasks of inpatient medical care. The major complexity of inpatient units is their cyclic nature, in which patients receive cyclic service from several resources: nurses, nurse assistants, and therapists. By creating this generic process map we allow a top-down analysis of nurse operations that can easily be transitioned into simulation modeling. Simulation experiments can be carried out to estimate operational productivity such as resource utilization (particularly nurses), patient length of stay, and waiting time; allowing us to confidently identify waste from operations. The reports of the preliminary analysis are presented and future works discussed.