ABSTRACT

Introduction As healthcare costs continue to rise and providers move toward optimizing the care delivery processes with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)’s triple aim of improving patient experience, improving health of populations, and reducing costs as the eventual goal, the ability to assess trade-offs among resource utilization, service, and operating costs is becoming more and more important. Simulation, successfully applied in other industries, is an industrial engineering methodology that provides the ability to assess such trade-offs and is now gaining traction in healthcare. This chapter discusses the use of simulation modeling in studying and improving health systems. The chapter will cover the basics of discrete event simulation model development, and its common applications in healthcare.