Preparedness of an emergency department network for a major earthquake: A discrete event simulation-based design of experiments study

Abstract

© 2016 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.This study presents the results obtained after using a discrete event simulation (DES) model for an emergency department (ED) network in a region of Istanbul under earthquake risk. For this aim the first step was to create a DES model of the network including five public hospital EDs using AnyLogic simulation software©. This model was used to create earthquake related scenarios. Then, a design of experiments (DOE) was conducted in order to examine the effect of the main factors on the performance measures (PMs) of patient average length of stay (LOS) in the ED and utilization of resources. A generalized full factorial design was performed where these simulated model factors were (1) the rate of estimated casualties depending on the earthquake magnitude and earthquake time, (2) routing probabilities of patients from the regions to the EDs inside the network and (3) percentage of patient arrivals with respect to the triage level. The experiments were sorted according to the first and third factors. Each PM was analyzed independently. On conclusion, a multi criteria analysis was conducted for each ED in order to show their preparedness capability for a major earthquake.