Shift toward Process-Driven Patient Care
There is a shift toward process-driven patient care, according to current health care trends. The logistical principles used by healthcare facilities to set up the phases of care for the duration of the treatment process would ideally need to be modified to allow for the seamless implementation of this new trend (Vos, Groothuis & van Merode, 2007).
Opportunity for New Hospital Design
The opportunity to adopt new design layouts in line with the intended logistical principles is provided by the construction of a new hospital (Roth & Menor, 2003). This paper analyzes a case study of a hospital design, taking into account the assessment technique used to rate the design layout, accounting for operations management choices, and coming to a conclusion with acceptable layout recommendations.
Challenges in Designing New Hospitals
Designing new hospitals is purposed to improve their efficiency and enhance service provision to patients. Designing a layout is a challenge due to future uncertainties that have to be a factor in the designing process. Such factors may include future patient numbers, the patient volume composition, and the technologies possibly integrated in later periods. The factors are considered to prevent operational failures and reduce inefficiency in the new hospital. Operational failures which result in "breakdowns in internal supply chains that prevent work from being completed" are the main challenges faced by hospitals (Tucker, Heisler & Janisse, 2014). Hospital personnel has up to 10% of their time consumed by the negative effects of such failures. Hence, the need to ensure that hospital design layouts account for as many variables as possible to reduce cases of operational failure as soon as the hospitals are functional.
Maximizing Output with Available Resources
An operations management perspective requires maximizations of output (delivery of service to patients) with the available resources. This is done while taking account of different service delivery requirements which include appointments, emergencies/urgent or the semi-urgent patient needs (Vos et al., 2007). Hence, there is need to realize short output times and movement distances in the building locations. Hospitals have all their elements related to each other from corridors, consultation and examination rooms, the reception areas and the waiting facilities. The hospital design layout ensures that all these elements have the capacity to accommodate future changes in the general factors being considered (Vos et al., 2007). Hence, the design layout is an attempt to create the most appropriate floor plan in accordance with projections for the future situational developments.
Evaluation Method using Discrete Event Simulation
In this case study, a method of evaluation that involves discrete event simulation is employed. The steps followed include distinguishing the segments of the floor's plan, determining the flow of goods and people, designing experiments, implementing the resulting model, running the simulation experimenting, and analyzing the results. The hospital's floor plan is represented as segments in the simulation model (Vos et al., 2007). The simulation is a model of the hospital's estimated operational rates and has its variables changing at separate points of times. The simulation model contains an estimated number of goods and people expected at normal functioning capacity. The segments are designated as locations with limited capacity.
Designing for Support and Adaptability
The number of people present in a given segment is provided by the simulation as a performance indicator of the maximum value of the number of people present in a segment at the same time (Vos et al., 2007). The floor plan is then designed to be able to support the number of people represented by this figure. Additionally, the simulation model offers the number of times the maximum capacity can be exhausted in given time slots. This is done by setting up experiments to investigate flow intensity and direction of movement. Such experiments are set up to test the ability to adapt to new developments.
Challenges in Building a New Hospital
In this case, a merger of two hospitals will see that a new one is built in another location. It is intended to introduce a 21st-century airport "operations management concept" in the "design of an outpatient clinic" (Vos et al., 2007). The discrete event model was appropriately implemented to investigate its functionality. Thus, minimal space was to be maximized by centralizing waiting areas. The evaluation model was to test whether the design layout allows for efficient movement of people and goods (Roth & Menor, 2003).
Shortcomings in the Design Layout
The model is tested for functionality and the ability to meet future developments asserted its ability to support functionality. However, it demonstrated falling short of meeting future developments since certain variables indicated over congestion at certain corridors in the hospital at certain times. This is because contrary to estimations, the centralized waiting rooms had the effect of affecting the flow of movement within the corridors. Hence, according to the results, the management is risking a great deal by building a hospital with a limited flow of goods and people.
Importance of Operational Management Decisions
A look at the operation management decisions made in the evaluation was to ensure the functionality and ability to adapt to future developments. By these criteria, the evaluation process was guided by a few decisions. First, a look at the maximum capacity of various segments, then the capacity to hold at the various time slots followed by logistical concept considering technology and patient type variations (Vos et al., 2007). They should have included future technology adaptations flexible for in-patient facilities and greater capacity in case of an increase in the demand for services (Tucker et al., 2014).
Conclusion
The hospital model lacks in its ability to accommodate increased volumes sufficiently; thus, the design layout requires a revision. I would recommend decentralized waiting rooms to increase flexibility in certain parts of the hospital. Additionally, I would recommend the standardization of consultation room sizes to create more space for the waiting rooms reducing congestion.
References
Roth, A. V. & Menor, L. J. (2003). Insights into service operations management: a research agenda. Production and Operations management, 12(2), 145-164.
Tucker, A. L., Heisler, W. S. & Janisse, L. D. (2013). Organizational factors that contribute to operational failures in hospitals. Working Paper, 14-23.
Vos, L., Groothuis, S. & van Merode, G. G. (2007). Evaluating hospital design from an operations management perspective. Health care management science, 10(4), 357-364.
