Simulating patient flow at the LAUMC Radiology Department -

Abstract

This thesis is on applying Operations Research (OR) techniques and Simulation to reduce patient waiting times and improve resource utilization at the Radiology Department of the Lebanese American University Medical Center (LAUMC) previously known as Rizk Hospital. A study was conducted to collect data and analyze the actual behavior of the system, and extract key performance indicators (KPIs); for example, patient inter-arrival times, various service (procedure) times, patient waiting times, and equipment utilization. A simulation model was then developed in Arena to process the collected data. The model takes into account realistic factors such as patient no-shows and lateness, unscheduled patient “walk-ins”, and patients undergoing more than one radiology procedure per visit (such as X-Ray and mammography). The simulation model is used to find bottlenecks causing congestion in the system flow, and to suggest changes leading to improvements. Such changes include manipulating (adding-removing) resources (radiology machines or technicians) in order to reduce waiting time and ease the flow of patients in the system.