Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Using Real-Time Location Systems & Simulation Modeling To Improve Healthcare, Colby Thomas Mattie

Masters Theses

In the healthcare industry, facility managers often find themselves with limited resources, lack of timely data, and unexpected crises that they have to respond too. Their options are based on hastily made assumptions and a limited understanding of all implications of the problems at hand. This scenario has become a concerning issue for the healthcare industry where problems can arise at any time and every minute counts. The healthcare industry is also littered with wasteful processes and regulations that increase the cost for physicians and facility operators and decrease the overall care for the patients. This is very evident in …

A Methodology For Designing Airports For Enhanced Security Using Simulation, Oliver Nwofia, Christopher A. Chung

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

With the advent of the new security measures, today’s airports have become increasingly complex and congested. Air and passenger traffic continues to increase; consequently, the need for intelligent design concepts is required. Unlike all other existing airport designs that focused exclusively on operational performance, this study focused on the development of a new airport terminal design methodology that takes a proactive approach to minimizing the effects of security disruptions while simultaneously maximizing operational performance and passenger flow. The study addressed the impact of security operations on both the design of airport facilities and passenger flows, and discussed options and scenarios …

Using Discrete Event Simulation To Improve The Patient Care Process In The Emergency Department Of A Rural Kentucky Hospital., Molly Cassaro Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The patient care process of a rural Kentucky hospital is a complex process that must be flexible in order to deal with a large variety of patient needs and a fluctuating patient volume where all patients are unscheduled. A simulation model of an average month in the emergency department was built using the Arena Simulation package. Methods for creating a simulation using Arena are included in this work. Statistics were generated from a number of different sources to create an accurate representation of the model. The Hospital reporting shows a need to improve on two quality measures being tracked, the …

East Tennessee Children's Hospital Lean, Eddie D. Eatherly, Catherine Julson, Kelsey Tjader, Jack Smodic, Lanier Loftin

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Methodology For Scheduling Operating Rooms Under Uncertainty, Marbelly Paola Davila

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An operating room (OR) is considered to be one of the most costly functional areas within hospitals as well as its major profit center. It is known that managing an OR department is a challenging task, which requires the integration of many actors (e.g., patients, surgeons, nurses, technicians) who may have conflicting interests and priorities.

Considering these aspects, this dissertation focuses on developing a simulation based methodology for scheduling operating rooms under uncertainty, which reflects the complexity, uncertainty and variability associated with surgery.

We split the process of scheduling ORs under uncertainty into two main components. First, we designed a …

Evaluating The E-Consult Process For Diabetes Care Delivery At An Outpatient Care Clinic, Brian M. Zoll

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The occurrence of one of the most common chronic conditions in the U.S., diabetes, is expected to rise 53% from 24 million cases in 2003 to 37 million cases in 2023. The U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is not immune to this. The VHA has experienced an $820 million increase spending on diabetes patients between 2000 and 2008. The VHA has tried to keep the growth of chronic care costs in check through improvements in patient access to care by expanding its network of community-based outpatient clinics. Other methods the VHA has used to curb chronic care spending costs are …