Evaluating hospital pharmacy staffing and work scheduling using simulation

• Published in: Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, 2005 p. 8 pp.
• Main Authors: Spry, C.W., Lawley, M.A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2005
• Subjects: Aging; Analytical models; Costs; Drugs; Hospitals; Job shop scheduling; Medical services; Medical simulation; Personnel; Throughput
• ISBN: 0780395190; 9780780395190
• ISSN: 0891-7736; 1558-4305
• DOI: 10.1109/WSC.2005.1574514

With increasing healthcare costs, an aging population, and a shortage of trained personnel it is becoming increasingly important for hospital pharmacy management to make good operational decisions. In the case of hospital in-patient pharmacies, making decisions about staffing and work scheduling is difficult due to the complexity of the systems used and the variation in the orders to be filled. In order to help BroMenn Healthcare make decisions about staffing and work scheduling a simulation model was created to analyze the impact of alternate work schedules. The model estimates the effect of changes to staffing and work scheduling on the amount of time medication orders take to process. The goal is to use the simulation to help BroMenn find the best schedule to get medications to the patients as quickly as possible by using pharmacy staff effectively.