A simulation study of bed allocation to reduce blocking probability in emergency departments: A case study in China

AbstractImproving the bed allocation policy can alleviate the blocking, a situation where admitted patients cannot be transferred from the Emergency Departments (the upstream) to inpatient departments (the downstream) due to unavailability of beds. We aim to find a bed allocation policy that reduces the blocking probability and improves bed utilisation considering the interaction between the neighboring departments, as well as the priorities of different departments. This concept and the proposed model are tested in a real-life case at a hospital in China. A two-stage bed allocation simulation model is developed to evaluate the effect of bed assignment on the blocking probability and bed utilisation. Results show that the blocking probabilities can be reduced by 1.32%–8.98% and 1.74%–4.16% under different priority assignment cases and total number of beds. Sensitivity analyses are performed to examine the effect of varying patient arrival rate on the performance of bed allocation policy.