A simulation study on demand disruptions and limited resources for healthcare provision

Abstract

Philanthropic hospitals in Brazil are in great part funded by the government and are daily accessed by a large portion of the population. As the Brazilian economy faces deep cuts in healthcare, managers are adjusting budgets and focusing on less expensive alternatives such as process improvements. Hospitals are even more impacted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic with widespread disruption on operational processes forcing them to stretch resources. Thus, it brings an opportunity to evaluate the actual performance of these settings under different scenarios where analysts may address bottlenecks and the impact on resources. Our focus is to quantify the capacity of an emergency department to support patient demand with limited resources in pre and post-pandemic scenarios. We use a 12-month longitudinal dataset consisting of pre-pandemic emergency occurrences and assigned resources.