Abstract:
Many public hospitals have faced large influx of patients, particularly a well-equipped hospital that has to admit all patients regardless their conditions. These overcrowding wards cause stress to medical staffs and ineffective uses of resources. One way to alleviate such inundated inpatient is to select some patients whose conditions require less clinical attention with predictable and short period treatments and, then, place them in an observation ward. This intermediate ward increases turnover of beds and reduces unnecessary paperwork as patients are considered to be outpatients. This thesis studies the feasibility of an observation ward at Internal Medicine Department in a tertiary care hospital. Having evaluated the impact and medical criteria of diseases by physicians, an integer programming model is proposed to select groups of patients while minimizing a number of selected diseases and maintaining the utilization of medical beds throughout the week. The analysis of solutions leads to two designs: 1) three-bed ward located within the existing emergency department and 2) seven-bed ward located in a future new building. After the layouts are proposed, the operational and the financial aspects of each design are presented. The designs are embedded into a simulation model to depict variation of patient. The simulation results show that the three-bed ward is capable to serve 44% of candidate patients who diseased in selected diseases. Alternatively, the seven-bed ward is capable to serve 69% of all candidate patients. The study reveals that the financial benefit of an observation ward can be affected by types of medical entitlement and calculation of healthcare reimbursement.