Introduction
Planning a new hospital is a crucial task. It demands a thoughtful balance between infrastructure, workflow, and patient experience. A leading healthcare organization wanted to confirm the master plan for its new hospital facility, ensuring that it could accommodate projected patient loads, maximize resources, and keep lead times low. To achieve this, the client engaged Production Modeling India (PMI) to conduct a comprehensive simulation study, with a focus on understanding how spatial layout and departmental interconnectivity would impact real-time operations.
Client’s Challenge
• Validate bed and resource requirements based on projected demand.
• Identify bottlenecks and overcrowded areas to inform layout decisions.
• Analyze the impact of distance between departments on patient movement and care delivery.
• Enable visualization of an integrated hospital model to support cross-department coordination.
Transforming Hospital Planning with Simulation: A Capacity and Layout Validation Case Study
PMI’s Approach
PMI adopted a modular, simulation-led strategy to assess and refine the proposed facility design:
Built separate simulation models for each department (OPD, diagnostics, emergency, etc.), using historical and forecasted data.
Individual models were validated and then combined into a comprehensive, integrated hospital model to visualize end-to-end patient flow.
Applied value-added (VA) and non-value-added (NVA) classification to identify opportunities to shorten patient lead time.
Tested how variations in department proximity affected patient transit time and resource utilization.
Findings and Recommendations
• The hospital's projected capacity of 61,000 patients/year was validated successfully.
• The RIO (common room) emerged as a bottleneck due to limited capacity and prolonged patient in-system time.
• Adding 5 beds to RIO significantly improved patient flow and reduced congestion.
• Layout adjustments were recommended for smoother transitions between critical departments.
Conclusion
Through data-driven modeling and simulation, PMI helped transform a blueprint into a functionally validated healthcare facility, ready to serve with greater speed, comfort, and care efficiency.