A Simulation based Imperialist Competitive Algorithm for an Emergency Department to Reduce Door to Doctor Time

Decision making in complex systems is a difficult task and it can be more complex when high budgets are involved. The complexity and interdisciplinarity of healthcare industry problems make this industry one of the attention centers of computer-based simulation studies to provide a proper tool for interaction between decision makers and experts. Emergency departments operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. Therefore, interrupting their system in order to evaluate their performance and efficiency is almost impossible. The majority of patients in public health systems are suffering from long length of stay while hospital managers are struggling with shortage in budget and resources in emergency departments. This study tries to provide a simulation based evolutionary optimization in an emergency department to allocate the resources in the best way to minimize door to doctor time subject to the problem constraints which are capacity and budget.