Capacity planning and management for an obstetrics unit in a hospital

Obstetrics (OB) is a branch of medicine that deals with caring for women during pregnancy, childbirth, and post delivery time periods. By mapping the flow of OB patients throughout a hospital, it can be seen that this class of patients undergoes movement between multiple nursing units with varying length of stay at each stage. From planning and strategic perspectives, it is necessary to examine how the current capacity meets patient demand to facilitate future operational decisions. In this research endeavor, a discrete event simulation model was built to capture the system dynamics of a hospital's OB operations, which includes Labor and Delivery, Mother and Baby, and Nursery units. Incorporating the various patient flows and pathways, the simulation model was verified and validated and later used to analyze the impact of increased patient volume on the utilization of nursing rooms. This helped determine the additional capacity the units could handle without 'choking' the system. Also, the impact of the increase in 'C-Section' rates on the system was analyzed as a function of the patient length of stay and units' utilization. The simulation model, combined with data analyses, enabled the research team to sketch the performance of the current system and determine if additional capacity is required in the planning horizon. While maintaining the current bed capacity, it was determined that, by limiting the utilization to 70% the system could handle an additional 200 deliveries, whereas an additional 400 births can be handled if the target utilization is limited to 80%. Copyright