Use of Computer Modeling to Streamline Care in a Psychiatric Emergency Room: A Case Report

Computer simulation using JaamSim tested the impact of changing the number of providers, proportion of independent to supervised providers, shift provider added, time to hospitalization, and the number of beds in order to identify bottlenecks in a psychiatric emergency department. Adding an independent provider from 4 p.m. to midnight produced the largest improvements: reductions in time to bed, time to provider, and length of stay by 82%, 68%, and 31%, respectively. Decreasing time to hospitalization and adding beds achieved modest improvements. Modeling allows simulated changes to one parameter at a time and provides bespoke analysis for a variety of clinical settings.