TY - GEN
T1 - Design of centralized ambulance diversion policies using simulation-optimization
AU - Ramirez-Nafarrate, Adrian
AU - Fowler, John
AU - Wu, Teresa
PY - 2011/12/1
Y1 - 2011/12/1
N2 - Ambulance Diversion (AD) has been an issue of concern for the medical community because of the potential harmful effects of long transportation; however, AD can be used to reduce the waiting time in Emergency Departments (EDs) by redirecting patients to less crowded facilities. This paper proposes a Simulation-Optimization approach to find the appropriate parameters of diversion policies for all the facilities in a geographical area to minimize the expected time that patients spend in non-value added activities, such as transporting, waiting and boarding. In addition, two destination policies are tested in combination with the AD policies. The use of diversion and destination policies can be seen as ambulance flow control within an emergency care system. The results of this research show significant improvement in the flow of emergency patients in the system as a result of the optimization of destination-diversion policies compared to not using AD at all.
AB - Ambulance Diversion (AD) has been an issue of concern for the medical community because of the potential harmful effects of long transportation; however, AD can be used to reduce the waiting time in Emergency Departments (EDs) by redirecting patients to less crowded facilities. This paper proposes a Simulation-Optimization approach to find the appropriate parameters of diversion policies for all the facilities in a geographical area to minimize the expected time that patients spend in non-value added activities, such as transporting, waiting and boarding. In addition, two destination policies are tested in combination with the AD policies. The use of diversion and destination policies can be seen as ambulance flow control within an emergency care system. The results of this research show significant improvement in the flow of emergency patients in the system as a result of the optimization of destination-diversion policies compared to not using AD at all.
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U2 - 10.1109/WSC.2011.6147846
DO - 10.1109/WSC.2011.6147846
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84858027457
SN - 9781457721083
T3 - Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference
SP - 1251
EP - 1262
BT - Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference, WSC 2011
T2 - 2011 Winter Simulation Conference, WSC 2011
Y2 - 11 December 2011 through 14 December 2011
ER -