Integrated decision support systems for improving emergency department performance in Irish hospitals

In addition to the system's complexity and uncertainty, healthcare managers face many challenges, including the increasing levels of demand and patient expectations at the time of more budget constraints enforced on healthcare service in Ireland. The delivery of a better patient care requires effective decision making especially in planning of healthcare resources. For an emergency department (ED) of a leading university hospital in the south of Dublin City, a decision support application for resource planning considering multiple performance indicators was developed. A comprehensive discrete event simulation model was used to identify the most significant variables and key factors that affect the ED performance. Combining this model with Taguchi orthogonal arrays and data envelopment analysis in an integrated manner helps to improve decision‐making procedure in terms of systematic scenarios' selection and evaluation. The developed system is used for resource planning and also to assess risks due to the shortage of medical staff of the emergency department. Results show the importance of balancing doctor numbers employed within ED in order to maintain reasonable patient throughput time.