Improving Electronic Health Record Downtime Contingency Plans with Discrete-Event Simulation

摘要

Healthcare has become reliant on electronic health record systems to support patient treatment. Despite all of the benefits of these electronic systems, they have one major flaw: they can go offline, leaving healthcare workers forced to employ contingency plans and procedures. The procedures are poorly regulated and rarely practiced, introducing the potential for significant increase to patient risk. Simulation methods provide a means to examine the problem and develop data derived solutions to make downtime safer. By creating a general simulation model, future study of specific real-world hospitals models and improvements to healthcare organizations can be expedited.