Developing a DEVS-JAVA Model to Simulate and Pre-test Changes to Emergency Care Delivery in a Safe and Efficient Manner

Patients’ overcrowding in Emergency Department (ED) is a major problem in medical care worldwide, predominantly due to time and resource constraints. Simulation modeling is an economical approach to solve complex healthcare problems. We employed Discrete Event System Specification-JAVA (DEVS-JAVA) based model to simulate and test changes in emergency service conditions with an overall goal to improve ED patient flow. Initially, we developed a system based on ED data from South Carolina hospitals. Later, we ran simulations on four different case scenarios. 1. Optimum number (no.) of doctors and patients needed to reduce average (avg) time of assignment (avg discharge time = 33 min). 2. Optimum no. of patients to reduce avg discharge time (avg wait time = 150 min). 3. Optimum no. of patients to reduce avg directing time to critical care (avg wait time = 58 min). 4. Optimum no. of patients to reduce avg directing time to another hospital (avg wait time = 93 min). Upon execution of above 4 simulations, 4 patients got discharged utilizing 3 doctors; 5 patients could be discharged from ED to home; 2 patients could be transferred from ED to critical care; 3 patients could be transferred from ED to another hospital. Our results suggest that the generated DEVS-JAVA simulation method seems extremely effective to solve time-dependent healthcare problems.