Evaluating the Efficiency of a Care Process Through Simulation: A Case Study in Maternity Care

Simulation is a powerful tool for modeling and analyzing complex systems, particularly in healthcare settings where patient flow, resource allocation, and service efficiency are critical. This study focuses on the maternity department of Farhat Hached Hospital, utilizing discrete-event simulation (DES) to model its outpatient care process. Arena simulation software was employed to build an "as-is" model, which revealed significant bottlenecks, including an average waiting time of 91.95 minutes for scheduled patients and a gynecologist utilization rate of 97%. To address these issues, this study evaluates several "what-if" scenarios. The findings demonstrate that increasing key staff resources is the most effective intervention, reducing the average waiting time to 75.66 minutes and the gynecologist’s workload to a manageable 76.2%. These data-driven insights provide hospital decision-makers with validated strategies for targeted improvements in service delivery and resource management.