Performance Evaluation of Public Healthcare Systems Through Simulation: The Case of “Sanitat Respon” Call Centre

In the current changing world, especially in the developed countries characterized by populations with a growing expectation of life, the way of assuring a sustainable funding and management of public health care systems (HCS) is becoming an urgent problem. How can the public planners control the quality level of the provided services when a reduction in available budgets and consequently a reduction in cost of the healthcare systems is nowadays mandatory? The efficiency of the human, technical and economic resources involved in the HCS must be effectively monitored in order to meet the cost reduction requirements and to guarantee the adequate perception of the quality of the service to the citizens. The industrial sector has developed methodologies and tools able to support politicians and managers in monitoring and evaluating performances of such networked and customer-centric environments. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how simulation can be an effective tool to lead the decision about resource allocation in a sanitary call-centre, where the perceived quality of the service is a crucial goal, evaluating different aspects of the systems performance. The project has been developed referring to the Catalan public health service where the “Sanitat Respon” call centre has been selected as the test case.