A Petri Net Model for Performance Evaluation and Management of an Emergency Cardiology Departments

The increased demand of visits in Emergency Department (ED) has saturated the capacity of EDs that require suitable tools in order to properly manage and organize the flow of work and people. This paper proposes a model to describe in a concise and detailed way the structure and the dynamics of a critical emergency department of the general hospital of Bari (Italy): an Emergency Cardiology Department (ECD). The model describes in a Petri Net framework the complete workflow and management of patients starting from their arrival to the ED to the discharge from hospital or to the admission in a cardiology department of the Chest Pain Unit. Moreover, suitable performance indices are single out in order to detect anomalies such as bottlenecks and waiting times. Some simulation studies show that the model is able to efficiently describe the ECD as well as to foresee the impact of variations in the medical staff and department facilities on the selected performances.