Seattle Children’s Hospital is leveraging a predictive analytics strategy known as digital twin simulations to test out new ideas, like opening a new location or altering an established process. The simulations, also known as discrete event simulations, ensure that any changes to hospital operations maintain the flow of a patient’s journey while ensuring efficiencies across the organization.
Organizations are helping to make Seattle Children’s more operationally efficient—cutting labor costs, preventing bottlenecks, and preventing burnout—so providers can maintain and even improve quality of care. Seattle Children’s Hospital has cloned itself; a digital twin leverages predictive analytics in healthcare to test new processes to streamline hospital operations and save resources.
A digital improve efficiency with a discrete event simulation. This allows workers to turn the hospital into a video game. The video game helps to determine the best way to run the hospital and then translate those results back into the real world. Digital twins can test how something like an admission boarding area in the emergency department would impact operational efficiencies.
Discrete event simulation has helped hospitals and health systems overcome operational challenges over the last couple of years in a less financially risky manner.
Money is the main driver. Expenses across the board remain high after the pandemic, while revenues in certain areas have stayed low. This combination could make 2022 one of the worst financial years for hospitals in a long time since hospitals do not have the same level of financial support from the government to offset losses, experts predict.
Discrete event simulation has helped hospitals target their biggest expenses and operational challenges. Those include labor and workforce. Seattle Children’s creates a capacity action score using the predictive analytics platform to better inform leadership and specific departments about their bed capacity and labor resources for the day.
