For a large portion of mental health patients, the Emergency Department is the first point of contact when in crisis and in need of urgent acute care. Unfortunately, those who have already received an admission disposition may wait hours or days after before being placed in a psychiatric inpatient (IP) care unit. Known as ED boarding, one primary contributor is the inability to locate an available IP bed for transferred patients. In this study, we develop a discrete event simulation modeling patients arriving at numerous EDs throughout the region, as they're either internally placed in a psychiatric IP care unit or externally transferred to an IP unit located outside the ED they originally arrived. This simulation is then used to investigate the effect of three proposed interventions to the IP bed placement process on key performance indicators like patient treatment delay, a metric incorporating both the patient's ED boarding period and time to travel to their eventual IP destination.

翻译：对于大部分精神健康患者而言，急诊科是危机发生时寻求紧急急性护理的首要接触点。然而，已获得入院处置的患者可能需等待数小时甚至数天，才能被安置到精神科住院护理单元。这种现象被称为急诊滞留，其中一个主要原因是无法为转诊患者找到可用的住院床位。本研究开发了一个离散事件模拟模型，模拟患者到达区域内多个急诊科的过程，患者或内部安置于精神科住院护理单元，或外部转诊至其原始到达急诊科之外的精神科住院单元。该模拟随后用于探讨三种针对住院床位安置过程的拟议干预措施对关键绩效指标（如患者治疗延迟）的影响——该指标综合了患者急诊滞留时间及前往最终住院目的地的行程时间。