A FRAMEWORK FOR EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT CAPACITY PLANNING USING SYSTEM DYNAMICS APPROACH AND THE THEORY OF CONSTRAINTS PHILOSOPHIES

Patient waiting time and service delivery problems characterize health care services and are more acute in an emergency department (ED). With more patients needing care and fewer resources to care for them, ED that operates at or above capacity is inevitable. This paper is a review of work-in-progress of a study being conducted in a government hospital in Penang, Malaysia. This paper proposes a hybrid of System Dynamics (SD) approach and the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in solving health capacity planning. The potential combination of these methods will be reviewed that is hoped to reveal the synergy between the established methods in addressing the health capacity planning options for the long-term future.